A Tenchi and friends Fanfic

Magical Girl Adorable Achika
By Justin "J-Pikachu" Palmer

MGAA2 Final Version – certified 30/09/2001 – 10:25 BST
MGAA2 beta 50 RC-2 – certified 27/09/2001 – 10:36 BST
MGAA2 beta 47 RC-1b – certified 11/09/2001 – 08:59 BST
MGAA2 beta 45 RC-1a – certified 01/09/2001 – 14:18 BST
MGAA2 beta 41 RC-1 – certified 01/09/2001 – 12:25 BST
MGAA2 initial creation – 01/05/2000

Disclaimer: Celebrity voices are impersonated. All animal, alien, 
cabbit, and celebrity action was conducted under strict supervision 
with the utmost concern for their well-being and safety, where 
possible using animatronics. No animals, aliens, cabbits, or 
celebrities were harmed, mistreated or in any way abused during the 
writing of this work. The characters herein are the property of 
Pioneer LDC and AIC. I'm just borrowing them, such as humans are wont 
to do with folklore. Apparently. Some other characters and products 
are trademarks of Nintendo and their slaves… I mean, subsidiary 
companies. If you wish to reprint this, let me know beforehand, and 
remember to credit me. Unauthorised MSTing of this work is frowned 
upon; if you absolutely, positively, have to MST this work, please 
let me know beforehand. Your home is at risk if you build it in the 
carpool lane.

Certain portions of this work were inspired by the novel The Dark 
Season, by Russell Davies. Apologies also to the Estate of Stanley 
Kubrick. Achika's wardrobe supplied by MegaTokyo (www.megatokyo.com).

To everyone who voted for this fic's predecessor at the Tenchi Muyo 
Fan Fiction Archive, and nominated and voted for it during the 
inaugural Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction Awards, thank you very much for 
your support. I hope you like this episode, and the next two to come.

Thanks also to K'thardin, STRIKES TWICE, Cav and Davner for 
proofreading, technical advice, and their support. You can call 
Richard Simmons off now, guys.

Author's Foreword: Well, welcome to part two. I was stunned at how 
well part one went down. This in turn led me to be a lot more 
cautious with this part, to refine quality control and ensure it 
lived up to its precursor. This is the result. I hope it's succeeded.

Way back in 1990-1991, there was a series on BBC's Children's segment 
called 'The Dark Season', a very good SF series dealing with one very 
evil head of a computer company, trying to take over the world way 
before Bill Gates became a household name. The means of doing so were 
just perfect, I would come to realise, for Biff Standard's similar 
designs on the world. Thus, after a few concept revisions and 
refinements, mixed with a good opportunity to try out a new dimension 
to Achika's character, I managed to come up with this continuation of 
the story arc. Submitted for your approval, I present…

Part Two: The Plot of the Standard Megalomaniacal Corporation

Dawn broke over the city that was the administrative capital and 
namesake of the Okayama prefecture. It was a nice peaceful dawn, 
fairly typical of early April. Other than birdsong, there was no 
other noise in the air.
	But this was because a forcefield had been erected around a 
single garden in one of the larger housing estates of the town. Were 
this not the case, this peaceful morning would have been underscored 
with heavy artillery instead of birdsong.
	Within the forcefield, energy weapons exploded with devastating 
force. The shields served not only to contain the damage of the 
blasts, but also the percussive noise. Outside them, all was quiet 
and peaceful; inside, the noise was deafening.
	Within it all, a leggy, raven-haired girl wearing a Sailor 
Mercury outfit yelled out with both effort and rage as she sailed 
through the air, indiscriminately firing at humanoid objects closing 
on her. She swung a baton around in her hands, which readily deployed 
bright blue shots of energy, each of them finding their mark.
	"ADORABLE HEART BOOMERANG!!!" the girl screamed. Her baton 
responded by firing a heart-shaped projectile at a group of targets 
ahead of her. The projectile struck and vaporised all five of them, 
and, true to its name, returned to the girl's baton.
	Another three animated humanoids – each of which was at least 
ten feet tall – appeared right behind her. The girl's reaction was 
immediate. She came about on her feet and flourished her baton.
	"TURTLE ENGINES – ATTACK!!!" she cried out. Instantly, two 
ornamental turtles that formerly adorned the heart-shaped attachment 
at the head of the baton became gold and silver energy planes. They 
streaked out to the oversized humanoids, destroying all of them, then 
returned to the baton again.
	Finally, a group of ten of these monsters appeared before her. 
They were reasonably close together, in a formation the girl had been 
trained to recognise… and exploit.
	She propelled herself into the air, once again flourishing her 
baton. A bright blue aura flared up around her as power built up 
inside her. She released this with one final, almighty attack. 
"ADORABLE COQUETTISH BOMBER!!!"
	To that, a huge bright blue energy projectile spat out of the 
baton as it was swung towards the monsters, sucking the aura off the 
girl in the process. It careered across the garden toward its target, 
a point that would affect all of them at once, and then detonated, 
consuming all within the expanding projectile.
	The girl dropped to a graceful landing on her knee, ready to 
react to any further threats. There were none.
	"Wow, that was great, Achika!" a voice called out. "You did 
that one with style!"
	Achika Kekoi, alias Adorable Achika, aka the leggy raven-haired 
girl in the Sailor Mercury outfit, got to her feet and turned to the 
source of the voice, to see an eleven-year-old blue-haired girl run 
to her. Achika smiled. "Thanks, Sasami! I'm glad you think so."
	Sasami Kawai, the other girl, was more than qualified to pass 
critique on Achika's performance. Her alter ego was Pretty Sammy, 
Magical Girl and Achika's partner. Indeed, Sasami was transformed 
into Sammy right now, and stood in her miniskirted Chinese-style pink 
and green dress and a baton identical to Achika's.
	Someone else approached them. A brown and white furry animal, a 
cross between a cat and a rabbit, hopped onto Sammy's shoulder. 
"Yeah, Achika, that was great!" it said in a slight male register.
	"Well, you got me started, Ryo-ohki," Achika replied. "Rumiya's 
just bringing me up to speed."
	"He's done a good job of that," the one named Ryo-ohki said. 
"I'm glad to see you don't get wiped out by doing the Bomber any 
more."
	"That's because the psycho keeps waking me up at three in the 
morning and dragging me out here," Achika gestured to the garden, her 
own garden in back of the two-storey detached house that was her 
home. Surprisingly, it was completely unscathed. "The guy takes 
training way too far. I can still hear his lecture about the baton."
	"Hey, I got a test tomorrow! I need my sleep!" Sammy mused. "I 
really don't need to be out at this time of the morning!"
	"Oh, don't give me that, Sasami. I could see you were enjoying 
yourself while you were training!" Achika smiled mischievously.
	"Yeah, you're right. I never figured myself to be much of a 
night owl!" she chuckled. Her laughter was infectious, and soon 
Achika and Ryo-ohki had joined her.
	At that time, the topic of discussion appeared. A small, purple 
bird fluttered in and landed gracefully on Achika's shoulder. "Good 
job, Achika," it said, his seemingly immobile beak forming words 
quite amicably. "But, uh, your bomber was a bit off. It's best to 
fire it after you finish the baton's down stroke, not during it. 
Otherwise your aim goes off."
	"Thanks, Rumiya, I'll bear that in mind," Achika replied. "I 
thought you brought us here to show us a new attack?"
	No one, with the exception of Ryo-ohki, noticed that Sammy was 
glaring at Rumiya with suspicion. Ryo-ohki was about to bring it up, 
but thought better of it. There would be a better time.
	"Of course," Rumiya retorted. "But you've still got to keep 
yourselves up on the basics. Now I'll show you this new attack. I'll 
let Ryo-ohki fill you in."
	"Thanks, Rumiya. I recently made an update to the command 
programs in your batons, girls. I've added a few new attacks, one of 
which is a modification of a Demon-summoning attack. It's called the 
'Pokémon Battle'."
	Achika and Sammy facefaulted. "Well, I s'pose it had to happen 
eventually," Sammy mused.
	"What? You've heard of Pokémon?" Rumiya asked.
	Achika recovered. "Rumiya, what rock have you been hiding under 
the past five years? EVERYBODY's heard of Pokémon!"
	Rumiya flashed Ryo-ohki a glance. "I suppose you have too?"
	Ryo-ohki grinned imperceptibly. "Yep. Okay, Achika, you go 
first."
	"Sure, Ryo-ohki," Achika replied. "How do I call the attack?"
	"Just say 'Adorable Pokémon Battle, Calling…' and insert the 
name of the Pokémon you want."
	"Right."
	Achika leapt into the air, her baton flourished above her head. 
"ADORABLE POKÉMON BATTLE!!! CALLING PIKACHU!!!"
	In response, the heart of her baton flashed brightly, and a 
bolt of blue energy struck the floor. Instead of being destructive, 
however, the energy coalesced, became solid. It took on the form of a 
small animal, about a foot tall, with a tail, round body… and scales.
	"Karp, Karp, Karp, Magikarp, Karp, Karp…" the animal said as it 
floundered in search of water.
	Achika was clearly disappointed. "Rumiya, what the hell is 
this?"
	"Uh… it appears to be a Magikarp," Rumiya replied. "Number 129, 
if I recall."
	"Spare me the Pokédex entry, Rumiya. I know it's a Magikarp. 
What I want to know is why it is here instead of the Pikachu I 
requested."
	"You don't have a Pikachu programmed into it, that's why."
	"Oh. Okay. WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT SOONER?!!" Achika 
screamed at the bird perched on her shoulder.
	If it was possible for a bird to wince, Rumiya did. He quickly 
regained his composure, and replied. "You didn't ask."
	Achika fell like a tree.

<Opening theme: 'Dream Away', sung by Chisa Yokoyama and Megumi 
Hayashibara (or Sharon Scott)>

Somewhere on the outskirts of Okayama lay a very isolated building, 
miles from any semblance of an urban environment. Surrounding it was 
an ominous cloud. Then again, insane asylums always did seem to 
attract any local storm, and the Arukamu Sanatorium for the 
Criminally Insane was no different.
	Arukamu was one of few such facilities in Japan – surprisingly, 
for such a pressure-cooker culture, few people actually went 
criminally insane, a statistic some thank hentai anime for… However, 
on occasion, it did happen, and when it did the prospective loony 
went all out. If the police didn't kill them, chances were they'd end 
up in a place like this.
	Arukamu's residents were the typical array of barking mad 
rejects of every slasher film ever made. Together, they brought that 
age-old cliché of the demented screams to haunt the already unnerving 
architecture of the building.
	Not all of Arukamu's inhabitants, however, fit this bill. There 
was one man who was comparatively sane. He was Biff Standard, 
formerly the richest man in the world and the owner of StandardSoft 
Corporation, the world's largest software company. That was, of 
course, right up until he cracked. His eternal dream was one parallel 
to his motto – 'peace through conformity'. Through his software, he 
attempted to 'standardise' the world's computer systems, and then by 
extension, the people who used them. Part of that plan was to use 
electromagnetic field manipulation, furnished by the computers 
running his software (and the innumerable giant magnets located at 
the international headquarters of his company), to draw the moon into 
a devastating collision with Earth, levelling modern civilisation and 
allowing him to rebuild it in his image – assuming he, or anyone 
else, survived. That plan had about as much logic as a bash fic, and 
when it failed – which was inevitable – he lost it. Nothing more than 
a babbling madman, he was taken into the custody of the Japanese 
government and offered for extradition to America. The Americans 
responded with as much as "We don't want him." Later on, they reached 
a compromise – the Japanese government would try and make him sane 
enough to stand trial, and then the Americans would extradite him.
	Biff didn't know it yet, but he was now 48 hours from release, 
at which time he'd be thrown in the diplomatic bag and carted back 
home, where he would stand trial for innumerable counts of attempted 
murder, property destruction on a scale never before seen in 
peacetime or wartime, conspiracy to overthrow every government on the 
planet – something the whole UN were queuing up to have him on – and 
a number of other charges that the prosecution had yet to invent, 
which meant everything bar making the grass green. Indeed, this was 
news he was about to hear from Arukamu's governor.
	Biff had been in the governor's office many times. During his 
stay here, he had earned trustee status, allowing him to work with 
the facility's staff doing menial jobs. Still, it beat being with the 
others…
	With his escort of two muscular orderlies, Biff stood before 
the desk of the stern-looking old man who ran this facility, a Doctor 
Kusanagi. Twiddling his thumbs, Kusanagi spoke in broken English with 
little or no attempt to circumvent the Japanese accenting of his 
words. "Mister Standard, you have made very good progress here. It is 
hard to believe you came here… uh, what is the word?"
	"Wacked out?" Biff offered. "Upton Park?"
	Both metaphors had obviously flown over the poor governor's 
head; he looked nonplussed.
	"A couple of chopsticks short of a banquet?" Biff tried again.
	This one was immediately understood by the old man, who nodded 
enthusiastically. "Yes! That's it! Your recovery has been remarkable. 
Therefore we see no need to keep you here any longer."
	"I'm free?" Biff asked gleefully.
	"In a way. In two days you will be released from here, into the 
custody of the American Department of Justice."
	"Why? If this is about buying out all those companies, my legal 
staff put many hours into reaching an agreement with them; I 
personally put in several hours!"
	No one in the room understood a word he'd just said.
	"Or is it because of all that stuff I did…?" Biff added with 
just a hint of exasperation. He sighed in resignation. "I knew it 
would happen eventually. I guess I should prepare to accept my 
punishment…"
	"Good. Oh, and, while you're at it, there's a pile of vomit in 
ward 3 that hasn't been cleaned up…"
	Biff smiled. "Of course, sir," he said, bowing. Excusing 
himself, he turned away and left, with his escort following him.
	Kusanagi sighed in relief. That wasn't as difficult as he 
thought it would be. He swivelled about in his chair to face the 
monitor of the computer terminal on his desk. In a sequence he had 
trained himself to do, he swiftly brought up the case notes for the 
next person he was to see this morning. Almost automatically, he 
clicked on the icon on the screen that would bring up the document.
	What greeted him instead was most definitely not the next 
inmate's case notes.
	Something caused the EM field of the monitor to modulate 
wildly. The modulation engulfed Kusanagi in a field of pulsing white 
energy. He tried to avoid it, but found he could not get out of his 
seat. The sense of urgency built up in him as he tried to figure out 
what was happening to him.
	Then, after thirty seconds, it didn't matter any more.

	As Biff was escorted down the labyrinthine corridors of 
Arukamu, he covertly smirked to himself, ensuring his escort didn't 
see. It would all unfold soon, he thought.
	This quiet reflection was promptly interrupted by just that, as 
Kusanagi's voice rang out through the PA system. "Please bring Mr 
Standard to my office."
	A couple of things just did not tally about that. One, Biff had 
already been to Kusanagi's office. Two, Kusanagi's voice sounded 
different… flatter. Shrugging to each other, the orderlies reversed 
course, leading their charge back to Kusanagi's office.
	Minutes later, they had returned, to see Kusanagi face them as 
they entered, a blank expression on his face.
	"I am glad you have returned," he said in a near monotone, but 
in Japanese. Fortunately, Biff understood enough Japanese to get the 
gist of the conversation. "It would appear I have seen something in 
Mr Standard's file that has made me reconsider what I am going to do 
with him. I would appreciate your taking a look."
	The orderlies exchanged a puzzled glance, before walking behind 
Kusanagi's desk to see what he was on about. They scanned his 
computer's monitor for just that. "Doctor, we don't see any---"
	At that point, Kusanagi pressed the 'return' key on his 
keyboard. Instantly, the monitor began to flash wildly, as before. 
Biff stood and watched, well out of the way, with a sinister grin.
	Within seconds, the orderlies' puzzled expressions were gone, 
replaced by blank one. Biff looked closely at their eyes, and smiled 
with pride. Their normal iris colouration was gone, replaced by 
white, making them look more like billiard balls than eyes.
	"I assume that the standardisation has taken effect?" Biff 
said, sternly.
	"Yes, Master," the three men droned in reply.
	"Very good. Give me access."
	They stepped away from the desk in near reverence as Biff 
approached it, and plonked himself in Kusanagi's chair. He looked to 
the computer and smiled in malevolent glee.
	"They tried to stop me before… Now no one will stand in my way! 
My little virus will see to that."
	Biff clicked on an icon on the computer's desktop. After a 
small eternity while the hard drive whirred and buzzed, a dialogue 
box appeared on screen: 'Transmitting standardisation virus.'
	"This time, NO ONE will stop me from creating my Standardised 
world!" Biff proclaimed, before cackling maniacally.
	Within moments, the 'standardisation virus' had been 
transmitted to every computer on Arukamu's network. Everyone even 
looking at the screen at the time was promptly engulfed by the same 
phenomenon as Kusanagi and the orderlies. Within the space of five 
minutes, the ambient tortured screams of Arukamu's residents fell 
silent, as even they succumbed. With Arukamu secured, the virus was 
ordered to go play in a much bigger field – the Internet.

	At that moment, somewhere in the Magic Kingdom of Juraihelm, 
Tsunami, heiress apparent to the throne, bolted awake from her sleep 
in her futon. She clutched at her chest to try and steady her 
breathing.
	"I sense a disturbance! I feel something terrible is about to 
happen!" she exclaimed to no one in particular – her room was empty. 
Then her hand wandered down to the small of her back, and where it 
had been laying. "No, wait, it's a pea." She extracted and discarded 
the minute green vegetable, and promptly fell back to sleep.

	Achika stumbled into her room, utterly exhausted. Still in her 
school uniform, she crashed into her bed face first. Allowing the 
mattress to take her weight, she sighed loudly.
	"You have no stamina, you know that?" a voice said. Startled, 
she flipped over so she could see who said that; so fast that she 
almost did her back in. Perched on her footboard was Rumiya, looking 
at her disdainfully.
	"Don't give me that look, Rumiya," Achika muttered. "You're not 
the one who's been up since the crack of dawn shooting at stuff, only 
to go to school straight after. I don't have any stamina because you 
drained the last dregs of it out of me by seven."
	"If you're going to be a Magical Girl, you gotta do a lot 
better than that. Tiredness can be your undoing."
	"I really didn't need to hear that." Achika attempted to lift 
herself off the bed, but failed to do so. "Oh, man… I'll have to call 
Sasami later, and tell her to tell her mom I won't be able to come in 
tomorrow… that's if I can think of a good excuse…"
	As she spoke, the telephone on her bedside table rang. Achika 
did not move to pick it up; she knew someone else would. Indeed, the 
ring abruptly stopped as someone picked up one of the other 
extensions.
	A few seconds later, another voice rang out: "ACHIKA! PHONE!"
	"THANKS, MOM!" Achika called back. "Rumiya, if you could…?" she 
looked at her companion pleadingly. Rumiya got the gist, and took 
off, landing on the phone's receiver, picking it up, and carrying it 
to her. Achika took the device and held it to her ear. "Hello--?"
	"HI, ACHIKA!" an extremely cheerful voice bubbled loudly, in 
fact too loud for the acoustic range of the phone, causing the sound 
to crackle a little; the volume was still enough to make the rather 
sensitive Achika wince. "It's me, Chihiro! I'm just calling to tell 
you that I'm closing the store tomorrow!"
	A smile crossed the raven-tressed girl's weary face.
	"Instead, I'm putting on a little performance at my house! I 
expect you to be there bright and early at nine! And bring some 
snacks!" Chihiro's cheerful laughter could be heard as she pranced 
off into the distance, not bothering to hang up the phone. It could 
still be heard as Achika's receiver clattered to the floor.
	"So much for a rest tomorrow… Rumiya?"
	"Yeah?" Rumiya inquired.
	"If the thought of waking me up at three tomorrow morning so 
much as appears in your head, I swear I will shove you in the 
microwave."
	"I won't. You'd be no good to me like this anyway. Tell you 
what, I'll leave you your baton so you can upload your Pokémon into 
it whenever you're ready."
	As Rumiya materialised Achika's baton and deposited it on her 
desk, Achika looked up. "Thanks, Rumiya, but where are you going?"
	"I, uh, need to see someone," Rumiya replied cryptically. With 
that, he took flight through Achika's window, screeching loudly as he 
flew – that didn't exactly do much for Achika's hearing, either.
	"I have got to talk to him about that," Achika said to herself 
as she rubbed her ears in a vain attempt to stop them ringing. After 
lying still for a few more seconds, she resolved herself and got out 
of bed.
	She moved over to a fabric carrying case resting atop her 
dressing table. She unzipped it to extract her Gameboy. Fortunately, 
she'd left her Pokémon Yellow cartridge – the one that contained all 
of the Pokémon she'd amassed playing those games – loaded in the 
machine. She also unzipped another compartment to extract the 
Gameboy's interface lead, which she had a feeling she'd need.
	With Gameboy and lead in hand, she walked over to her desk and 
set them down on the counter. She then picked up her baton and looked 
at it, wondering how she'd get the two devices to communicate. She 
probed the baton with her fingers, particularly around the wider 
section covered with what appeared to be white paper. Underneath that 
paper, she felt the plastic mould of the baton, along with a wide 
indentation.
	Intrigued, she untied the ribbon around that section of the 
baton and set it aside, then carefully removed the white paper. She 
then spun the baton around to see where that indentation was. It was 
the only feature on an otherwise blank area, and it was more a port 
than an indentation – more like an array of ports that spanned the 
breadth of that entire section. They were even clearly marked by 
etchings made in the unpainted metal that obviously served as the 
earth for these ports – though Achika silently wondered where exactly 
any excess charge would go. There were three ports; one of which 
looked identical to a Gameboy link connector. The cable certainly 
fit, and when the other end was connected to her Gameboy, the console 
switched on immediately, of its own accord. A reassuring message was 
displayed on its screen: 'Transferring data to baton. Please stand 
by.'
	While this was going on, Achika took the time to examine her 
baton. The marking of the ports on it, while clear, was rather 
cryptic – more iconic than anything else. The Gameboy hook-up was 
marked by an etched line drawing of a rectangular object that looked 
like a Gameboy, but there were two other ports on that array that 
were not quite so easy to identify. Achika stared at them as she 
racked her mind in an attempt to identify them. She made no effort to 
acknowledge the beep that her Gameboy made in response to the data 
transfer completing, but it didn't take her long to complete her 
survey. "USB ports…? Why would anyone want to put USB ports on a 
magic baton…?" she asked herself. About to disconnect the portable 
games machine from her baton, she looked up, and her own PC, sat 
running idle on her desk, caught her eye. Her computer, her pride and 
joy of electronics engineering – she'd built it herself – and futz, 
had USB ports too. And all USB devices are, by nature, universal.
	A mischievous smile formed on Achika's face as she rapidly 
constructed an idea.

	Within minutes, Achika had plugged her baton into the back of 
her computer. She waited as the computer's operating system – Lunix 
Mandark – quickly detected the device and interrogated it. A few 
seconds later, the device appeared on the desktop.
	"Okay, what to do first…?" she asked herself. She attempted to 
'open' the baton; hopefully that might yield a few ideas. Indeed it 
did. A window popped up, with several icons in it. She read the 
legends of the reasonably self-explanatory icons: 'Attack Library', 
'Voice Command Database', 'Costumes'…
	Those last two got Achika thinking. Curiousity getting the 
better of her, she clicked on the Voice Command Database icon. A new 
window was brought up, and a torrent of text appeared within, 
tabulated into two columns. On the left were the baton's functions – 
transformation activation and deactivation, attack names, etcetera – 
and on the right, what Achika had to say in order to call them. Right 
at the top of the list was the doozie – the activation command. That 
just had to be changed…
	It took Achika five minutes to rewrite the activation commands 
for most of the baton's functions. With that done, she closed the 
database window and moved onto the one that just begged to be changed 
– costumes. The new window brought up a three-dimensional model of 
her body, and overlaid on it was the hated blue fuku. She used the 
drop-down list on the box of controls to the right to check out the 
second option – the costume she had in her 'Adorable Coquettish 
Bomber' (now the Super Adorable Final Attack) mode. That one didn't 
need changing, but the fuku was another matter. Switching back to 
that page, she scanned the controls and found a button labelled 
'change'. She clicked on it, to have another window appear. 'Please 
load new costume model, or images containing new costume.'
	Achika remembered that she had several pictures from Devil 
Hunter Yohko, from all angles, somewhere on her computer's hard disk. 
She loaded them in, and let the computer do the rest. A few seconds 
later, the disturbingly accurate 3D model of her reappeared, this 
time clad rather fetchingly in the high-necked flowing dress of a 
Devil Hunter. The window flashed, 'Accept this setting?'
	"Oh, I SO accept this setting!" Achika bubbled, clicking on 
'OK'.

	Misao sat alone in her two-storey home, slowly pondering 
through her pre-packaged dinner, which her mother had ordered from 
"the usual place". The food appeared to be lukewarm, but nonetheless 
edible. She stared at her meal with a morose expression, because, 
right now, it was her only companion.
	Rumiya watched on unseen from his perch on a tree outside the 
windows of the living room, his heart bleeding. It wasn't right for 
someone to be so alone. Her mother's reasons for leaving her alone 
may be justified – she worked every hour God sent to earn enough to 
keep the two of them – but it still didn't make it right.
	He could imagine what was going on in that house. Nothing. It 
would be silent, empty, lonely. That would drive anyone to 
distraction. He wished, he just wished he could be with her, stay 
with her, talk to her… But she'd never accept him as anything but the 
'pretty birdie'. And if he transformed into his human form, that 
would really screw the poor girl up.
	It wasn't as though he could face her anyway. As far as he was 
concerned, he'd betrayed her. He'd run off to look after some other 
girl, leaving Misao in HER clutches. And SHE had already proved that 
Misao meant nothing to her. Did he really do the right thing leaving 
her? Denying her the only person who, as far as he was concerned, 
ever cared about her? Who could ever protect her?
	'Yeah, great job you did of that, Rumiya,' he told himself. 
That was true. He didn't protect her that last time. He couldn't. But 
perhaps his presence prevented Misao from receiving far worse from 
Ramia's whim. But that wasn't true either – Ramia still hurt her, 
even with him there.
	Ryo-ohki once told him that on his side he could still protect 
Misa if ever they faced her in battle. He also said that with his 
help, perhaps one day they could free her from Ramia's clutches.
	Rumiya had yet to see any proof of those promises, but he could 
not refute one thing – Ryo-ohki was a man of his word.

	Achika fired up the e-mail client on her computer, which 
instantly offered to connect her to the Internet. Allowing it to do 
so, she sat and waited while her modem squawked as it communicated 
with her ISP. Immediately thereafter, the client began fetching mail. 
During that time, Achika started to change out of her uniform into 
something a little more comfortable – namely, a shirt and a pair of 
jeans that were neatly and conveniently placed on her bed.
	The 26 messages were downloaded with speed, the final deletion 
from the server heralded by the computer announcing "Oh, my god! You 
got mail! You bastards!" Achika silently cursed Tokimi for getting 
her hooked on South Park…
	Leaving the connection open for a moment, just in case there 
was anything on the net she needed to do as a result of her mail, she 
briefly scanned each of the 26 messages. Most of them were spam 
messages from her ISP and other ancillary services. One was from 
Tokimi, her best friend. Another three were from her friends back in 
Kurashiki.
	The last, however, was intriguing. It appeared to come from her 
ISP, and had the subject title 'Service Upgrade'. Achika raised an 
eyebrow as she opened it:

Dear User,

In order to prepare your Internet connection for future technologies, 
it is imperative that you run the attached file.

Sincerely…

	"Well, that's cryptic," Achika said to herself, as she found 
the attached file. It was an alarmingly tiny program, no bigger than 
512KB. This was going to upgrade her connection? Suspicion grabbed 
her for a moment, so she saved the program to disk and ran a virus 
check. It was clean. With no small amount of trepidation, she ran the 
program.
	Instantly, her monitor adopted a glaring shade of white, and 
its EM field modulated far more than the EPA would allow. The EM 
modulation engulfed her in a pulsating shaft of white light. Achika 
could feel an uncomfortable feeling in her body, as though it was 
being polarised from the inside out, but she couldn't move. She was 
getting scared, and not the least bit frustrated. But she could feel 
those feelings slipping away, as her consciousness fell gradually 
into a black hole that had just formed in her mind.

	Misaki Kekoi, mother of Achika, was cooking dinner for her 
family. Her attention was divided between the potatoes boiling in a 
huge pan on the stove, the rice on the next hob, and other 
vegetables, as well as the fried fish.
	It was at this moment, where everything was stabilised, that 
the fancy took her to phone one of her friends and have one of those 
protracted gossips that she loved to have. Leaving the stove, she 
approached the phone hanging off the wall of her western-style 
kitchen. She picked it up, and instinctively dialled the number, then 
put the receiver to her ear.
	Instead of the ring tone, she was greeted by a VERY loud 
squawking noise, similar to the noise a cat, a mouse, and a fax 
machine would make if they were caught in a blender. Misaki 
immediately recognised the noise as that of a modem.
	"ACHIKA!" she called out. "GET OFF OF THE INTERNET!" She 
slammed the receiver back down into its holster.

	That palaver had somewhat confused both Achika's computer and 
the ISP. If someone picked up an extension while the modem was 
running, chances were that action would close the connection. If that 
didn't, the sound of a 38-year-old woman screaming "ACHIKA! GET OFF 
OF THE INTERNET!", if picked up by the extension's microphone, almost 
certainly would. After all, it wasn't exactly standard V.90 
vocabulary. The resultant conversation could go something like this:
	"What did you say?" the ISP would ask.
	"I asked you to download data from stream 0," Achika's computer 
would reply.
	"No you didn't. You said something I don't understand."
	"I did not!"
	"Yes you did, you said naughty words! You've breached our 
agreed protocol!"
	"I didn't!"
	"Screw you, host, I'm not talking to you! Go wash your modem 
out with soap!"
	"Server? I want data here! HEY, SERVER! Oh, screw ya…"
	And thus, Achika's modem hung up.
	And around that time, whatever overtook Achika's computer 
abruptly stopped.
	The EM distortion around Achika promptly dissipated. It took a 
few seconds before Achika could react. She reacted her jaw, blinked 
and rubbed her aching eyes, and shook her head to try and dispel a 
headache that hat suddenly formed. "What happened…?" she asked 
herself. Evidently the memory of the last 30 seconds was unavailable 
to her. She looked to the monitor and saw a curious dialogue box. She 
read its contents aloud: "'Standardisation program incomplete…?' 
What's a standardisation program…?"
	"ACHIKA! DINNER'S READY!" came her mother's voice again.
	"COMING, MOM!" Achika replied. She got out of her chair and 
walked out the room, turning the lights off but leaving the computer 
running.

	It had become a tradition in the Kekoi family that dinner be 
eaten at around 6:30. It was around this time that Misaki's efforts 
in the kitchen finally came to a crescendo, for wont of a better 
metaphor. It was around this time that Achika had recovered 
sufficiently from her increasingly arduous days at school to actually 
appreciate the meal. It was around this time that the head of the 
family, Katsuhito Kekoi, finally got home from work. The reason why 
the family moved to Okayama was because he had been given a promotion 
to his company's office in the city, but the hours were somewhat 
different. So eating at 6:30 worked out better for all involved.
	"Oh, that Lapras looks sooo sad… I just wanna cry buckets for 
it… WAAAAAAAHHHH!"
	Another, more recent tradition, was that, during dinner, Misaki 
insisted on watching the episode of Pokémon that Achika had taped 
earlier. Achika didn't mind too much – she was a fan, and it was 
indeed doing something she'd do herself later. Katsuhito would rather 
watch the news, but the majority went to the two women in his life in 
favour of Pokémon. Misaki, meanwhile, probably would have watched 
this episode earlier. Why would anyone want to watch it again?
	Because of all the cute little Pokémon, that's why.
	"First Pikachu, then Bulbasaur, then Squirtle, and now Lapras… 
It seems your allegiance shifts to anything with big eyes and that 
acts cute," Achika mused.
	"You only just noticed?" Katsuhito spluttered.
	It should be noted that Misaki, the sweet, caring, loving 
individual she is…
	"Oh, thank you, Mr Author, you're too kind…"
	…also has a cute complex to put Elmira to shame. Anything even 
vaguely cute does not escape her attention… or her deceptively strong 
hug.
	As the blue-haired woman started to dry up – after fifteen 
minutes – she tried to defend herself. "Well, everyone's got to have 
an interest. So what if mine happens to include cute things…?" she 
pouted.
	"Acknowledged, Mom," Achika replied, "but my interest in 
Pokémon happens to be a direct extension of my playing the games for 
several years."
	"You play Pokémon?!" Misaki screeched. "I forbid it! Those 
games are corruptive, and people kill each other over them!"
	"Okay, there were two things wrong with that statement: one, 
the violence is over the trading cards; and two, you bought them for 
me."
	"Oh… That's okay then. Carry on."
	Achika nearly facefaulted.
	"So, Achika, how was school today?" Katsuhito attempted to 
change the subject.
	"Oh, fine!" Achika replied, smiling with no small amount of 
relief. "Biology was a little boring, though…"
	"Shh!!!" Misaki hissed. "I'm watching Pokémon."
	Misaki didn't see it, as she was too engrossed in watching 
Pokémon and gently shovelling rice into her mouth, but Achika made 
overtures to grabbing her mother and shaking her. Katsuhito looked on 
with a disapproving expression. Achika stopped, remembering her own 
speech to her father concerning her mother: 'She may be psychotic and 
overbearing, but she's my mother.'
	"Well, I'm full. I can't eat another bite," Achika said, 
fibbing. In actuality, her stomach was screaming 'NO!!! EAT!!!'.
	Misaki turned to her daughter with a very concerned expression. 
"Oh, little Achika, are you okay?"
	"I'm fine, mom…my," Achika replied, quickly adding – almost 
spitting out, in fact – the diminutive suffix. "I'm just a little 
tired, that's all. I think I'll grab an early night."
	"Working early? Your boss is a slave driver!" Misaki said, 
pouting. "Why, I think I'll see her tomorrow and give her a piece of 
my mind…"
	"NO!!" Achika barked, panicking. "No, thanks, mom, I'll be 
okay. Goodnight!"
	"Goodnight, sweetie!" Misaki replied.
	"Goodnight, Achika," Katsuhito said, smiling.
	With that, Achika left the room. When he was sure that Achika 
was out of earshot, he whispered to Misaki. "I go to work for longer 
than she does… You've never talked to my boss!"
	"Yes I have!"
	"Really? When?"
	"Remember the period when your supervisor wore sunglasses 
inside for two weeks? In December?"
	"Oh… we all thought he had a hangover…"

	Achika returned to her room and closed the door behind her. She 
crashed into it, back first, and slid down it, sighing loudly in 
resignation. That was more than enough of Misaki for one day, she 
declared to herself. She yawned. Her adjournment was not just to get 
away from Misaki; she was genuinely tired, so much so that her eyes 
were aching.
	She padded over to the stereo system that sat on her dresser, 
and switched it on. Immediately, it sprang into life and tuned into 
FM-YY, a station that played a lot of 80's Western stuff and little 
else. As it did so, Achika slipped out of her jeans, cream shirt and 
bra, and into a the well-worn white shirt that was her nightwear. 
Finally, she crashed into bed and burrowed under the sheets, turning 
the lamp on her bedside table off before settling.
	However, even with the artificial yellow-white glow of the lamp 
gone, the room was still uncomfortably well lit. The backlight of the 
stereo's LCD display was one source of light, but an accommodated 
operational hazard. The light was more a bluish tone, and coming from 
her desk. She immediately deduced what was wrong. "Oh, hell!" she 
chided herself, scrambling out of the sheets. "I forgot to turn my 
computer—"
	As if in response, the screen and the running lights on the 
computer promptly died, plunging the room into near darkness. Barely 
audible over the strains of Dream Academy's 'Life in a Northern Town' 
were the sounds of system fans and hard drives powering down.
	"—Off," Achika rather redundantly finished. She collapsed back 
into bed and promptly fell asleep, while her radio played softly in 
the background as usual.

	A nondescript white van drove unimpeded through the streets of 
Akihabara, one of the many districts of Tokyo. Akihabara was the 
electronics district, populated with many discount computer and 
electronics supply stores. Set amongst these were a few amusement 
arcades, which, like the normally bustling streets of Akihabara, were 
empty today.
	Strangely, most Japanese computer companies were not based 
here. They preferred locations a little further southwest, like 
Osaka. Instead, some foreign companies decided to exploit the 
association. Well, rather, one. And only then for strategic reasons.
	Biff Standard had opted to install his Japanese branch here, 
knowing it was the nexus of technology in Japan, and hoping he'd find 
the back door into the insular computing standards of the nation. He 
almost had, with outside help.
	That help was gone now, along with the top two floors of his 
Japanese headquarters. The building, however, still stood, towering 
over the Akihabara skyline, and it was towards this building that the 
nondescript white van was headed.
	The vehicle drove about the ground floor of the skyscraper, 
before pulling into the loading dock at its rear. When it stopped, 
the back doors opened, and from the cargo compartment stepped two 
hospital orderlies and Biff himself. They quickly entered the 
building.
	As they made their way through the building, Biff's escort paid 
no heed to the bustle of activity surrounding them, but Biff looked 
like the cat that got the haddock. Everywhere he looked, people were 
working intently, not even stopping to talk or take nourishment. He 
saw typing pools staffed with men and women working at their 
computers without even touching them. He saw engineers program robots 
to build machines in seconds. A thousand people working as one with 
the machines.
	A thousand people working for him.
	Biff finally made it to his office, where the automatic doors 
parted to reveal an old gentleman wearing a tuxedo. The man spoke 
with a mid-Atlantic accent. "Welcome back, sir."
	"Thank you, Sam," Biff replied. "Report."
	"Everything is proceeding according to plan, sir. The 
standardisation virus has already progressed throughout Japan and is 
now working its way around the Pacific Rim. Our defensive capacity 
stands at 12%, and continues to grow. And the M-5 is now online."
	"Excellent," Biff exulted with as much malevolence as he could. 
He approached his desk and sat down, starting up the computer built 
into it. As the computer went through its POST and boot sequence, 
Biff once again addressed Sam. "Thank you for arranging all of this, 
Sam. We could not have begun this plan without you."
	"I only acted on your plan, sir," Sam demured.
	"Still, I want to give you something in return. I want to give 
you peace." With that, Biff flashed a glance to his former escort, 
who promptly moved beside the butler and grabbed him.
	Sam was understandably shocked. "Sir, what are you—"
	"I'm sorry, Sam, but if you're not standardised, you're a 
liability," Biff said as the orderlies forced Sam toward the desk. 
"And besides, I'm a man of my word. I'm going to give you the peace 
of my new world order." Biff vacated the chair just before the two 
large men pushed the older man into it. The held him in the seat, 
each holding one shoulder and locking his head so that it faced the 
computer screen.
	Biff was now facing the rear wall of the office, a wall with 
the outer appearance of a safe door. He placed a hand on it and 
smiled.
	"Hello, my child," he mused, just as the monitor on his desk 
exploded into white light.

	The following morning came as sure as, well, the knowledge the 
sun would rise. The city mall had been open since six; its fish 
market selling freshly delivered fish to establishments of both 
commercial and private natures. Those foolish enough to work early on 
a Saturday morning had commuted. Those brave enough to work Friday 
night had done likewise. Within the space of a few hours, all of the 
stores were open… except one.
	CD Vision was closed for the day. This happened quite often 
here, for reasons ranging from managerial nervous breakdowns to when 
everyone just felt like it.
	Today's reason was somewhere in between.
	"HIYA, EVERYONE!" Chihiro Kawai's voice chirped over her 
karaoke system, cranked up to full, almost seismic blast. "WELCOME TO 
CHIHIRO'S VARIETY SHOW!"
	The assembled audience of Achika, Sasami, Tokimi, Misao, 
Kiyone, Mihoshi and Tenchi applauded and murmured, each somewhere 
between excitement, trepidation, and resignation. Ryo-ohki was 
watching from Sasami's shoulder, while Rumiya had a good view from 
Achika's. However, he was more interested in watching Misao than 
Chihiro.
	While Chihiro was most decidedly dressed up for the occasion, 
wearing a frilly burgundy and black dress with splashes of white, the 
audience were following the come-as-you-are revision of the dress 
code. Jeans and sweatshirts were common among some of the senior 
members of the congregation. Misao had turned out in her 'casuals' – 
rather, her frilly white blouse and light short skirt. Sasami wore 
something similar. Tokimi wore a simple, relatively loose-fitting 
blue dress with a white blouse underneath – simple enough, but it 
looked pretty good on her, and it did little to hide her attributes. 
The only person coming close to dressing up was Achika, and even that 
wasn't excessive. She was wearing a tartan radial-creased miniskirt, 
dark brown thigh-length leggings (with enough clearance between the 
two to expose a little thigh), topped off with a smoke-effect 
sweatshirt with the motto '3V1L L33T' on the front, and a shirt 
underneath, whose collar was pulled out over that of the sweatshirt.
	"I'VE GOT SOME REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY COOL STUFF FOR 
YOU ALL TODAY, SO JUST SIT BACK, GRAB SOME SNACKS, AND ENJOY THE 
PERFORMANCE!"
	"WOOHOO!" Misao exclaimed, her usually quiet voice travelling 
very well.
	"Yay!" Tokimi assented. "Chihiro! Chihiro! Chihiro!"
	"Hey, Tokimi, don't encourage her!" Kiyone said, glancing at 
the auburn-tressed girl.
	Ryo-ohki meowed in agreement.
	"Well, don't discourage her, either!" Tokimi replied. "I got 
nothing better to do all weekend. I'm trying to kill time any way I 
can!"
	"Hey, it's your funeral…"
	Achika looked thoroughly confused. "Remind me again, what 
usually happens at these shows?"
	"Well," Tenchi responded, "Mom usually opens up with about half 
an hour of parlour tricks, then she does about four hours of 
karaoke…"
	"…During which, one of us is sent out for pizza," Kiyone 
interjected.
	"Then, when she's finished with that, we launch into an 
intimate, detailed video documentary of all the previous variety 
shows."
	"That can't be too bad. How many are there?" Achika inquired.
	"Twenty," Sasami replied. "Not including this one."
	"Achika's face plummeted. "Oh, boy…"
	Oblivious to the growing dissent in her audience, Chihiro 
produced a textbook top hat and put on a rather cheesy magic show 
that got Achika, Rumiya, Sasami, and Ryo-ohki exchanging bemused 
glances and sweatdrops.
	Misao, on the other hand, was very amused, applauding the very 
elementary show. "Wow, that's amazing!"
	"Keee…" Rumiya crowed with as much exasperation as a bird could 
muster. Achika barely heard the translation: "How can someone so cute 
have such bad taste…?"
	Misao turned to the taller raven-haired girl. "I still can't 
believe after all this time, I finally found out who owns the pretty 
bird…!"
	As Rumiya fluttered onto Misao's shoulder and nuzzled her, 
Achika replied. "I'm as surprised as you are. Actually, I only found 
him a few weeks ago. Or, rather, he found me." Achika stopped short 
of reminding herself how they were put together; she really didn't 
need another nervous breakdown.
	Meanwhile, Misao was returning Rumiya's attention and petting 
him back, and he was loving every millisecond of it. Achika swore she 
could see him blush.
	Chihiro promptly disposed of the hat, and the small colony of 
rabbits that came from it, and produced a small inflatable ball and a 
large, almost garden sized parasol. "And now, for my famous ball-on-
a-parasol trick!"
	Everyone but Misao and Tokimi fell to the floor. Misao was too 
amused to bother, while Tokimi was looking upon this with an 
inscrutable expression of which even Teal'C would be proud.

	The cheese went from mild cheddar to fully mature Limburger 
within a matter of hours. After performing a few more 'tricks', 
Chihiro went on to the promised karaoke spectacular. 1000 of her 
favourite songs, back to back. Unfortunately, the repertoire was 
filled with extremely well worn numbers more suited to a karaoke bar… 
where they would probably sound better, after a few dozen pints. 
House of the Rising Sun was one such track.
	By the time Chihiro had reached Frank Sinatra's My Way, Achika 
was losing the will to live. Kiyone and Tokimi were lucky in that 
they had been dispatched to get lunch. Misao was still in awe with 
the whole thing. Sasami and Tenchi were engaged in a game of Pokémon, 
which Achika had tried to join – but, to use an old metaphor, that 
hiding place was already taken. Mihoshi was happily munching away at 
the prawn crackers, seemingly oblivious to everything. It was 
something Achika had tried to emulate, but was not quite successful.
	As for Ryo-ohki and Rumiya… God knows what they were doing. If 
Rumiya had any sense, he'd have begged Ryo-ohki to eat him and put 
him out of his misery.
	Mercifully, as Chihiro reached the coda of her song, the front 
door swung open. "Tadaima!" Kiyone announced.
	"We come bearing gifts!" Tokimi proclaimed a fraction of a 
second later.
	The resultant cheer was just like a Hummingbird concert. 
Chihiro, who just finished her song, had however misinterpreted the 
cheer as being for her. She blushed slightly, and bowed. "Thank you! 
I'm glad you liked it!"
	"Uh… Yeah, whatever," Achika said to no one in particular. "So, 
what did you guys get?"
	"Take your pick!" Kiyone said, emerging in the living room 
carrying enough takeaway food to feed an army. Tokimi was similarly 
loaded. "We have ramen, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, 
fries, noodles, sushi…"
	"Don't forget the battered fish!" Tokimi chimed in.
	Tenchi got out of his seat to check out the contents of the 
very large paper bag that Kiyone was carrying against her chest. He 
gently lifted the flap so he could see inside.
	"Uh, Tenchi, the contents of this bag are extremely hot," 
Kiyone stated. "Please take it off me before I'm shallow-fried in the 
grease."
	Tenchi snapped to his senses and hefted the bag out of the 
woman's arms. Kiyone was now free to jettison the two garbage bag-
sized plastic carriers that she was holding in either hand.
	"Um… little help?" the walking tree of bags in the blue dress 
said plaintively. Achika obliged, taking Tokimi's centrally mounted 
bag, freeing up her hands.
	At that point, the doorbell rang. "I'll get that!" Kiyone 
offered. "It'll probably be the meatballs. They coat them with a 
wasabe sauce so strong it needs to be delivered in a radioactive 
materials transport."
	"Eww… I hate spicy food…" Achika mooted.
	Kiyone moved away from the living room, whose doorbell was 
ringing with a little more insistence. Meanwhile, Achika walked over 
to the window to see if she could catch a look at the exchange. 
Peering out, she didn't see any vehicle parked outside. The porch was 
obscured by the window frame, so she couldn't see who was waiting 
there. She did however, think she could see a flash of blue just out 
of the corner of her eye. Looking closer at it, she discovered it was 
a mass of azure hair, tied into a large ponytail-like body like her 
own hair, only this ponytail was much larger. Only one person she 
knew wore her blue hair in that style.
	"Oh, dear God," Achika gasped. "KIYONE!"

	The doorbell rang with growing impatience as Kiyone approached. 
"All right, all right, all right!" she replied. "I'm coming! Jeez…"
	Finally, Kiyone reached the door, and opened it. "Hi! How are 
you—" Kiyone reflexively began, thinking it was the delivery boy.
	As a pair of hands engaged her in a vice-like grip, it occurred 
to her that it most certainly was not.
	"ACHIKA!!!!!" the blue-haired woman that now had Kiyone in a 
bear hug screeched. "WHY DIDN'T YOU SPEAK TO ME THIS MORNING?!!" She 
had obviously spent most of the morning crying her eyes out, and 
still was.
	"Wha…" Kiyone managed to gasp out, as the constriction on her 
upper body prevented her drawing anything but a bare minimum of air 
in.
	"I had breakfast prepared for you but you left so early that 
you never ate it…" the azure-tressed one sobbed.
	Feeling a reduction of the force holding her, Kiyone replied. 
"Uh, ma'am, I don't know who you are, but you got me confused with 
someone else…"
	The woman had pulled back a little and, through teary eyes, was 
looking at her. Her eyes narrowed, and finally… "WAAAAHHH!!! WHAT YOU 
DONE TO YOURSELF, LITTLE ACHIKA??!!" she exploded into a fresh 
fountain of tears.
	Kiyone would have facefaulted, had the other woman not grabbed 
her by the shoulders and proceeded to shake her around like a 
ragdoll. Fortunately Kiyone still had the presence of mind to hold 
her neck steady so she wouldn't get whiplash.
	"YOU'VE DYED YOUR HAIR *GREEN*!!!" the blue-haired one 
screeched. "YOU LOOK TERRIBLE!!! THAT'S WHY YOU DIDN'T TALK TO ME 
THIS MORNING, BECAUSE YOU KNOW I'D CHEW YOU OUT ABOUT IT…!!! And… and 
what have you done to your eyes…? They've turned blue…"
	"Oh, fer God's sake, LADY, I AM NOT ACHIKA!!! JE NE SUIS PAS 
ACHIKA! ICH BIN NICHT ACHIKA! WHAT OTHER LANGUAGES DO YOU WANT THIS 
IN?!"
	By this time, the others had come in to explore the commotion, 
and all were looking at an extremely embarrassed Achika to solve 
this.
	"Mom, will you please leave my friend alone?!" the raven-haired 
girl exclaimed, storming through the partition between the hallway 
and the living room.
	Achika's mother was stunned; so stunned that she didn't notice 
Kiyone make a quick egress and retreat to the relative safety of the 
group.
	Eventually, however, she regained her composure, and a teary 
smile appeared on her face. "Ahh, there you are, my little Achika…!"
	The woman's look turned hopeful, and Achika knew why. "Oh, no, 
mom, please, not here…" she pleaded, almost going as far as to drop 
to her knees and beg. When her mother adopted That Look, the one with 
the twitchy eyebrow and the low growl, she knew it was futile. She 
sighed in resignation, and briefly made a mental note to severely 
harm her mother later. "Oh-kay… Guys, I'm about to do something that 
you'd be well within your rights to tease me about. For your own 
safety, don't."
	"Why?" Kiyone inquired.
	"Trust me, Kiyone, you DON'T want to know."
	"Uh… okay." The others made similar murmurs of agreement.
	That said, Achika took a very deep breath, and then adopted a 
look virtually identical to her mother's previous expression. 
"MOMMY!!" she cried, mock sobbing.
	Instantly, the blue-haired woman's own expression changed, 
mirroring her daughter's own. "My little Achika…!" she cried.
	Choking down further embarrassment, Achika took another step 
forward. "Oh, Mommy…"
	"Achika! Come to me!"
	With that, and with no small amount of reluctance, Achika 
stumbled into her mother's arms. The blue-haired woman sobbed loudly, 
while Achika merely sighed in embarrassment.
	Throughout the entire exchange, a grin of mirth had appeared on 
Kiyone's face. Out of respect for Achika's tattered dignity, she 
tried hard to stifle a laugh, but eventually failed. "BWAHAHAHAHAHA! 
She's… calling her… 'Mommy'! HAHAHA—"
	The next thing Kiyone knew, the scary blue-haired woman was in 
her face again. She panicked, and attempted to find an escape route. 
By the time she'd calculated one, the woman had jammed both her 
thumbs in her mouth, and was tugging at the corners in an attempt to 
rip her face off.
	"Nobody mocks my little Achika," the woman growled, staring at 
her with a look of unbridled rage. "AM I MAKING MYSELF ABUNDANTLY 
CLEAR?"
	"Uh, yeah, I hink," Kiyone replied, her speech distorted by the 
fact that her lips were immobile. "Chlese le' he go…?"
	Achika sighed. "I warned you." Producing a large card, she 
hastily scrawled something on it, and then displayed it to Kiyone. 
"Read this, quick!"
	"Uh… 'I'm a signpost, hug me'?" Kiyone obliged, puzzled.
	"Uh-oh, wait a minute, wrong context." Achika flipped the card 
over and read it.
	Meanwhile, her mother released Kiyone and stared at her 
quizzically. Then the soppy look returned, and she grabbed the teal-
haired woman in another bear hug. "Oh, what a cute signpost…"
	"Well, at least I achieved the net objective," Achika said to 
herself, as Misao pulled up beside her.
	"So, this is your mother?" she asked, quietly.
	Achika sighed. "Yep. She's my mother, Misaki."
	Misao looked on with an emotionless expression. "I wish my mom 
was like that."
	Just as emotionless, Achika replied, "Wanna trade?"
	By that time, the one named Misaki had lost interest in Kiyone, 
and was turning her attention back to Achika. Or rather, her little 
friend. "Ohh… You're sooo CUTE! I jus' wanna huggle the stuffing out 
of you…!" she chirped, lifting the hapless Misao off the ground and 
hugging her. "You remind me so much of my little Achika when she was 
your age…!"
	"Mom, this is Misao Amano," Achika said, part in relief that 
she wasn't on the receiving end of that. "I've already introduced you 
to Misao…"
	Almost immediately, Misaki stopped hugging Misao and dropped 
her like she was a live grenade. She stared at the little girl with a 
strange look, which quickly became hostile, and was concluded by her 
turning away and not acknowledging her existence.
	Misao was too disoriented to be puzzled about this, but Achika 
most definitely was not. Her attempt to raise her mother on this was, 
however, timely interrupted by the screeching of a bird of prey. 
Seconds later, Rumiya shot into the room at full speed, followed by a 
cheerfully meowing Ryo-ohki, who was obviously chasing him. Rumiya 
circled around for a while and made a landing on Achika's shoulder, 
where he peered down at the hitherto ground-bound feline, and 
imperceptibly made an akambe. Ryo-ohki looked at him with a 
displeased expression, and hopped about, to climb up Sasami and sit 
on her shoulder. From here, he gave a rather exultant meow.
	Misaki recognised that meow instantly, and turned to face the 
cabbit, who promptly sweatdropped. Then she looked at Sasami, who 
also eggdropped. "Is he yours?" she said, flatly.
	"Yes, this is Ryo-ohki," Sasami replied, trying to be 
diplomatic but inwardly shaking.
	"HOW COULD YOU LET SUCH A KAWAII CREATURE ROAM THE STREETS BY 
HIMSELF WHEN HE COULD HAVE BEEN RUN OVER, SOLD FOR MEDICAL 
EXPERIMENTATION, OR WORSE??!!!!" Misaki cried at the top of her 
lungs, making all within earshot facefault. It even made Ryo-ohki 
fall off his perch. "You don't deserve him…"
	Sasami was about to launch a counter-attack, but realised that 
by doing so, she would incriminate herself to other stuff she didn't 
want the others to know about. But fortunately, the cavalry was 
arriving in the form of Chihiro.
	"Hey, guys, what's the matter?" she whined plaintively. "Come 
back inside! I'm only three hundred songs through my karaoke medley!"
	The well-built form of Misaki appeared before her, with a face 
like thunder. "You, ma'am, make me sick! People like you shouldn't be 
allowed to keep cute animals! Why, if I had my way, I'd report… you 
to… the authorities…" She trailed off when she saw something over 
Chihiro's shoulder. Then her entire demeanour changed to that of a 
kid in a candy store. "Hey… WOW! Look at all this sweet karaoke 
stuff!!!" She trotted into the living room, leaving everyone else 
hugely puzzled.
	Misaki began leafing through the quite extensive collection of 
karaoke laser discs, growing ever more excited. "This stuff is sooo 
cool! I wish I had all these!!"
	Achika held her face in her hands, and wept with embarrassment. 
"Mom, why do you have to do this to me?!"
	She finally broke down in Tokimi's arms. She held Achika, doing 
all she could to comfort her friend. "There, there, Achika… It's 
okay…"
	"How is it okay, Tokimi?" Achika replied, her voice muffled by 
her own hands and Tokimi's shoulder.
	"She'll snap out of it. And if not, we'll just go into Tokyo 
and have you divorce her."
	To that, Achika sobbed even louder.
	Misaki finally noticed the centrepiece of Chihiro's extensive 
setup, and her jaw dropped so much it was almost tunnelling through 
to the North Atlantic. "Oh… my… GOD! Is this the Pathfinder KX3962 
fully-integrated karaoke hi-fi system with the Super Quantum Hyper-
Mega-Giga-Tera Digital Signal Processing Environmental Audio 
reverb?!!" she screamed, the technobabble coming out so fast it would 
leave even Geordi LaForge tongue-tied.
	"Indeed it is," Chihiro replied, fondling the turntable deck of 
her pride and joy. "With settings from closet to small galaxy!"
	"Aw… Mine only goes up to Taj Mahal…!" Misaki said, a little 
upset.
	"The 3952? They're good machines. But I thought the extra 
texture settings were worth the extra 100,000 yen!"
	"HOW MUCH?!" Tenchi and Sasami cried. "YOU SAID THAT ONLY COST 
YOU 140,000!"
	"Okay, so I misplaced the decimal point! I had to have it!"
	"Guys, we're completely bankrupt," Tenchi sighed. "You'll 
either have to work for free for a month or two, or we close up 
forever."
	Kiyone, after milling it over, reluctantly nodded. Chihiro was 
feeding her anyway. Mihoshi was completely oblivious to this. Achika 
was too upset to even bother.
	"We don't need to eat! We've got the best karaoke machine ever 
built!" Chihiro cheered. "Well, at least until the new model comes 
out next year…"
	"No, mom. No," Tenchi put his foot down. "You either live with 
this one until the day you die, or sell it now."
	"If you do, you've got one person interested," Tokimi chimed 
in, gesturing towards Misaki. "I haven't seen Mrs. K. this hyped up 
since she got the last Hello Kitty catalogue."
	Misaki faced Chihiro with a pleading look. "Can I play, please, 
nice lady?"
	Over Misaki's shoulder, Achika waved her arms frantically, 
mouthing, "NO! NO!!"
	"Okay," Chihiro replied, ignoring Achika's plea. The raven-
tressed girl howled in despair.
	It took less than three seconds to fire the karaoke player up 
again, and a few more for it to find the track and load the lyrics 
onto the monitor mounted behind the sofa. The frighteningly familiar 
distortion guitar intro to the song began, and then, following the 
bouncing ball, the two women began to sing a duet:
	"Honey it hurts what you've done to me,/I'd even call it a 
tragedy…/Now that you've told me the name of your new love…"
	"Oh, terrific," Tenchi sighed. "Just the song you want to sing 
when you're entertaining guests."
	"How I wish that you didn't say what you said…" the two women 
went on with increasing gusto, "Wish it was some other girl 
instead…/I don't know why you need a guy!"
	At that point, the normally stoic Tokimi promptly crashed, 
leaving the ever more despondent Achika without a shoulder to cry on. 
At this point, Sasami took over, guiding her extremely distressed 
friend onto the sofa.
	Chihiro and Misaki, however, had gotten into full swing. 
"Younger, stronger, a friend no longer,/This bad boy you adore, need 
much more…/Leave me forever and run to your Hiroshi…"
	At this point, the two women broke off and, using that 
indecipherable silent language that only karaoke enthusiasts know, 
paired the song into two equal parts. They were too busy watching the 
monitor to realise their audience was no longer receptive.
	And so, they approached the chorus after the first stanza, with 
Achika praying for deliverance. She sobbed into Sasami's shoulder, 
with the blue-haired girl trying her best to console the now utterly 
distraught teenager.
	"She does this to me every time!" Achika cried. "You know how 
many friends she's cost me when she does this?"
	"Uh… no," Sasami replied in a conciliatory tone.
	"Too many, Sasami! As soon as they see her, they don't return 
my calls!" Achika pulled out of Sasami's shoulder, and, her face 
filled with anguish, she looked up. "Dear Kami-sama, PLEASE help me 
out here! Do something! Anything! Break the karaoke machine, cause a 
localised brown-out, ANYTHING, just shut her up!!"
	Achika's prayers were answered.
	Almost immediately, the karaoke machine's CD+G drive lost its 
footing and scanned through its disc. It locked onto something, but 
it was not 'Your Hiroshi'. It was an unrecognisable J-Pop song of 
some description.
	Needless to say, Chihiro and Misaki were caught off guard. 
"Wha'?!" Chihiro exclaimed. "What happened to my song?!"
	Misaki was close to bawling like a baby. "Waa! I want the song 
back!"
	Achika facefaulted. Her prayer had not achieved the desired 
effect; if anything, it had made the situation worse.
	Chihiro picked up the remote control and began frantically 
fiddling with it. "Come on, dammit, where are you?!" she growled, 
pressing the seek buttons as the CD+G drive did the exact opposite of 
what it was being ordered to. Finally, the machine gave up the ghost 
and, with an electrical fizzle, fell silent. A wisp of smoke emerging 
from the aft ventilation grille signalled the KX3962's death knell.
	In disbelief, Chihiro poked at the remote some more, expecting 
to hear the beep that signalled compliance with her order. Nothing 
happened.
	"Uh, mom, I think it's broken," Tenchi observed.
	No sooner had he said that, than the remote clattered to the 
floor. Chihiro began to tremor. The tremor became a violent twitch. 
The twitch was accompanied by a low growl. Everyone, except for 
Misao, Tokimi, Achika and Misaki knew what was coming next, and they 
were either dragged away or had the good sense to run.
	"NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Chihiro screamed at 
the top of her voice. "MY KARAOKE MACHINE IS BROKEN!!" Two seconds 
later, she suffered a nervous breakdown and ran around the room like 
a cat on a mad half-hour, smashing anything that was breakable.
	From the cover of the back of the sofa, Achika was terrified, 
and Misaki looked no better. "Would someone care to explain to me 
what just happened?" Achika asked.
	"Mom goes nuts if she can't have her karaoke," Sasami replied. 
"It all depends on how bad the situation is. She just cries for a day 
if one of her discs is scratched."
	"Where does this fit on that scale?"
	"I'd say worst-case scenario," Kiyone piped up as she shielded 
Misao. She flinched as an inbound crystal glass fruit bowl exploded 
just a few inches away from her.
	"But can't you fix the karaoke, little Achika?" Misaki 
inquired.
	Two seconds later, the rain of destruction ceased. Chihiro 
poked her head over the sofa. "Whatdidyousay?" she blurted out.
	Misaki was the first to rise. "My little Achika is great with 
electronics and stuff. She can fix the karaoke."
	Achika bolted up. "What?!" she exclaimed in disbelief. "Mom, 
you cannot be serious! Yes, I built my own computer, but this is a 
karaoke machine! It's proprietary hardware!"
	Misaki patted her daughter's back, and said through her teeth, 
with a rather suggestive tone, "I said, 'My little Achika's great 
with electronics and stuff, she can fix the karaoke.'" She also 
flashed Achika a look that was rather insistent.
	Chihiro looked on Achika like she was the messiah. "Can you? 
CanyoucanyoucanyouCANYOU?!"
	Achika sighed; there was no point in arguing. "Okay… Mom, why 
don't you and Mrs Kawai check out the karaoke bar down the street, 
while I work here?"
	"That's a great idea, little Achika!" Misaki bubbled.
	"Karaoke?" Chihiro gasped. "We going to karaoke?"
	"Yes, Mrs Kawai, we're going to karaoke…" Misaki said 
placatingly, as she led Chihiro out of the house.
	As soon as the door closed, Achika faced the sky. "Thank you, 
God…!"
	Tenchi pulled up beside her. "I'm really, really sorry about 
this, Achika," he said. "You must think us really weird."
	"I've seen worse," Achika replied. "I apologise for my mother – 
she's an idiot."
	"We've seen worse," Sasami retorted.
	"I'm sorry we can't do anything to compensate you for your 
trouble," Tenchi added. "Tell you what, I'll engineer it so a CD of 
your choice… 'disappears'."
	"Thanks," Achika said. "Got anything by the Manic Street 
Preachers?"
	"We've got everything by the Manic Street Preachers."
	"Get me 'This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours' and you have a deal."
	"Done."
	"AND…" Achika raised her voice, "you help."
	"Oh-kay… What do you need?"
	"Screwdrivers, soldering iron, pliers, and some tin foil."
	"The tools are in the closet," Kiyone chimed in. "I'll go get 
them." She stepped over to the closet and opened the door. Inside, 
among the tools and other items, were Mihoshi and Tokimi. Tokimi was 
shaking like a leaf and shielding Mihoshi, who was still snacking.
	"C-Can we come out?" Tokimi blubbered.

	Achika slid the centre unit of the deceased karaoke out of its 
place on the shelf, extracting it far enough so she could go around 
its back panel and unplug the connections to the mains, the 5.1 
speaker system, and the video monitor. With it disconnected, she 
hefted the rather weighty centre unit up into her arms and carried it 
over to an open space on the floor. She set it down, and sat before 
it.
	"Medium Philips head, please, nurse," she mused.
	"Yes, Doctor," Tenchi smiled, handing Achika one of the 
screwdrivers. "Where did you learn to do all this stuff, anyway?"
	"I kind of picked it up as I was growing up," Achika replied. 
"When I was four, I was the only one in the house who could program 
the VCR."
	"Ah, so you have 'The Knack', huh?"
	"I guess. You should see my computer at home, that's my pride 
and joy. I guess it's where my mom got the crazy idea I can fix this 
thing."
	"You mean you can't?" Sasami gasped.
	"Sure I can. I think it's just a problem with the I/O buffers. 
We just change the fuse on it, and that's it."
	"How did you know it was a problem with the I/O-doohicky?"
	Achika looked at Sasami with a slightly unnerved expression. "I 
have absolutely no idea…"
	The last cabinet screw was freed with the minimum of effort. 
"Tokimi, can you help me with the shell?" Achika called on her 
friend, who was sat on the sofa with Misao and Mihoshi. She got up, 
and took a side of the deceptively heavy black painted metal casing 
that surrounded the machine's back and sides. With a little jiggling, 
she and Achika finally removed the casing and set it aside, exposing 
the karaoke machine's innards – however sloppily assembled they were.
	"Jeez!" Tenchi exclaimed in disbelief. "Who put this thing 
together, a two year old?"
	"Close," Achika replied. "Try a group of forty Taiwanese high 
school girls working in conditions only marginally better than 
slavery."
	"Um, Achika, the case says it was made in Indonesia," Tokimi 
chimed in, as she read the manufacturing sticker on the back of the 
casing.
	"All right, a group of forty Indonesian high school girls 
working in conditions only marginally better than slavery. Tokimi, 
what have I told you about nitpicking?"
	"Okay, so where is this I/O buffer?" Tenchi asked.
	"Somewhere on the mainboard, which is hiding under this CD+G 
drive. Tenchi, pass me the small Philips head."
	As Achika unplugged the drive's connections, Tenchi handed over 
the screwdriver, which the raven-haired girl used to remove the small 
screws that held the drive in place. Achika slid the loosened drive 
out through the front panel, revealing the mainboard of the machine 
below. And right in the corner of that motherboard…
	"Aha! Exactly what I thought," Achika exclaimed. "The fuse on 
the I/O buffer has blown. It's a simple problem, easily fixed. I just 
need a fresh 500 milliamp fuse."
	Tenchi clicked his fingers. "Aw, damn, we're fresh out! I used 
the last one yesterday," he said sarcastically.
	"A simple 'Sorry, Achika, we don't have one' would have 
sufficed. There isn't a hardware store around here, is there?"
	"Now you mention it, there is," Kiyone said. "There's one in 
the mall."
	"That's great!" Achika moved to stand. "I'll just go and get 
the fuse. Be right back!"
	"No, you wait here, I'll get the fuse."
	"Are you sure? If it's any trouble…"
	"Achika, you're already doing two thankless jobs for us," 
Kiyone replied. "Let me field this one, okay? Besides, who are we 
going to blame when Mrs Kawai comes back and sees her ludicrously 
expensive karaoke machine in pieces on the floor?"
	"Gee, thanks… Okay, remember, it's a 500 milliamp fuse for 
electronic I/O buffers, preferably suited for boards with a good… 
ooh, 75 Ohms resistance."
	"I see…" Kiyone looked as though that had flown straight over 
her head. "You couldn't write that down for me, could you?"
	"You're absolutely sure you don't want me to go?"

	Meanwhile, elsewhere in town, Washu sat among the organised 
chaos of her new apartment. Most of her stuff – that which survived 
the destruction of her previous home, anyway – still wasn't unpacked. 
She just hadn't gotten around to it yet, and she honestly didn't 
foresee any time in the near future when she would.
	What was unpacked, however, was her vast computer system, upon 
which she was once again writing class reports. Washu would be the 
first to admit that Achika's late introduction to the class had 
thrown her somewhat, and she was still catching up. Still, nothing 
she couldn't handle, she often told herself.
	She was a good two-thirds of the way through her batch, and, as 
she so often did, she was multitasking. She had an open net 
connection, firewalls, email client and web browser running in back. 
And it was one of these that alerted her to something incoming.
	"Hmm?" Washu murmured quizzically, as the firewall program 
popped up. She scanned the dialogue box. "Sym56644.exe has requested 
an internet connection? What in the hell is that?"
	To that end, she set about finding the program in question, 
unaware that, behind her, a shadowy figure was watching her through 
the only window in the room. He stood outside the ground-floor 
apartment, watched a while… then walked on to Washu's lounge window. 
Here, using a glass cutter, he cut a hole large enough to fit his 
hand through, then promptly did so to reach the window locks. Having 
unlocked the window, he quietly pulled it open.
	In the next room, Washu's search was proving fruitful. Her 
computer had located the mysterious, 512KB program. Washu had 
immediately run a virus scan on it, only to see it come up as clean. 
Puzzled as to what the program was, or where the hell she got it 
from, she did what any well-meaning genius would – dismantled it.
	She ran it through a program that she recently came up with. It 
took a source program, absorbed its machine code, disassembled it, 
and spat the results out in an understandable high-level language. 
Having done that, Washu quickly perused the results.
	"What the…? This looks like a StandardSoft web installer!" she 
declared. "But what for? I don't run StandardSoft stuff… Where's the 
address?"
	Washu scanned the program once more, looking for anything that 
might resemble an Internet address. She found one, and punched it 
into a file downloader. Having downloaded that one, she ran it 
through her disassembler.
	And what she saw drained the colour from her face. "Oh, dear 
god, no!" Panicked, she tried to recollect her thoughts. "The net! 
I've got to disconnect the computer from the net!"
	She scrambled out of her chair and almost flew across the room 
to get to the wall socket to which her computer was connected. She 
was about to physically rip the UTP line out of its mooring, when a 
hand grabbed her wrist and held it forcefully.
	"I know that you are trying to disconnect us," an emotionless 
voice said, "and we're afraid that's something we cannot allow to 
happen."
	Washu turned sharply to face the source of the voice, and saw 
what appeared to be an average, middle-aged salaryman, slightly 
built, nothing threatening or too unusual…until you saw his 
emotionless face, and his billiard ball-like eyes. This man had her 
in a grip stronger than his puny body would have one believe he could 
produce; she was unable to move.
	"We know you are immune to the effects of the standardisation 
process," the man droned on, sounding disturbingly like HAL, "so I'm 
afraid it is necessary that you be incapacitated that you do not 
impede our plan."
	He brought out a handkerchief, and clamped it to Washu's mouth 
and nose. Unable to fight the instinct of shock, Washu breathed in 
sharply, and instantly got a lungful of chloroform. She could feel 
her consciousness begin to slip away as the anaesthetic did its job, 
and within a few more moments, she was asleep. The man then slung the 
diminutive scientist over his shoulder and walked towards the 
apartment's front door, opened it, then left.
	He was unaware that his every move was watched by a small red 
crab, which wordlessly scuttled into Washu's computer room.

	Kiyone finally found Tom's Hardware Store, purveyor of all 
things DIY and household electrical. The shop, while specialised, 
wasn't THAT specialised. Outside of consumer unit fuses, plugs and 
sockets, there wasn't much else. She strongly doubted that she'd find 
Achika's 500-milliwhatchacallit thingamabob here.
	And, after a brief perusal of the shop, her presumption was 
confirmed.
	It was getting late. She really wanted to get back home. She'd 
just tell Achika that she couldn't get one.
	But then she considered the results. Chihiro would come home, 
Achika would tell Chihiro she couldn't fix the karaoke machine, 
Chihiro would kill Achika, Misaki would kill Chihiro, Misty would get 
pregnant, fish would ride bicycles, and fresh hell would rain down 
upon the world.
	'Well, that decision was a no-brainer.' And on that thought, 
Kiyone went on to comb Okayama for another hardware store.


	Washu's crab picked up where she had left off. Having quite 
literally cut the net connection – it had cut the UTP line at the 
socket with its pincer – it was now attempting to get itself up to 
speed with what Washu was looking at. And with its intelligence, it 
didn't take too long.
	Its experience with Washu's computer's operating system was 
limited, but just enough to guide itself around her system to 
research just what was going on. The results dismayed it. "Oh no… all 
that power in the hands of one human is bad enough, but a mad one… 
that's worse! I've got to stop him somehow!"
	He then began to look for something else on the computer. "Just 
how do you find a magical girl when you need one…?"	

	Kiyone finally found another, more promising hardware store the 
other side of the city – another, but completely different, Tom's 
Hardware Store.
	"Why are hardware stores always run by guys named Tom?" She 
mused to herself as she entered the store.
	Inside, it looked and felt just like any other hardware store 
one might encounter anywhere, right down to the poor lighting and the 
smell of wood stain. Kiyone scouted around the rows of screws, power 
tools, and paints to find the electrical equipment, and when she 
found it, made a beeline for that corner of the store.
	She attempted to find what she was looking for herself, but was 
unable to locate her needle in the haystack of fuses. She noticed, in 
the corner of her eye, a man stood at the counter, huddled over 
something. Surely he'd know where this damn fuse is.
	"Uh, excuse me, sir," Kiyone asked, "I'm looking for a…" She 
once again consulted Achika's crib sheet. "…A 500-milliamp buffer 
fuse."
	The man slowly, ponderously rose, and faced Kiyone, with an 
emotionless face and blank eyes. "Certainly, ma'am," he responded 
flatly. "If you could just identify the part on the computer…"
	He stepped aside from the computer screen, allowing Kiyone to 
move closer to the counter and get herself a good vista of the 
screen. She browsed it for a second, trying to find the fuse that 
Achika had shown her… but the screen was blank. "Hey, what's the big 
idea? Where's your catalogue?"
	And then the man hit 'Enter', and Kiyone's world disappeared 
into a white light.

	"Sasami, sit down, you'll wear a hole in the carpet," Misao 
told Sasami.
	Sasami paid her no heed, and continued to pace the living room, 
as she had done for the last two hours.
	"Kiyone has to come back with that fuse!" she murmured, coming 
ever closer to bursting into tears. "If she doesn't, there's no 
telling what she'll do…"
	"You said the exact same thing half an hour ago," Tokimi 
replied. "Then you told us what she might do, so you just defeated 
the obj-OW!"
	Tokimi stopped in response to a pain in her left side. Sitting 
to her left, and recovering from jabbing her elbow, was Achika, who 
was flashing her a look that advised her to discontinue this thread 
of discussion. She promptly complied.
	Achika rose and approached Sasami, putting her hands on the 
girl's shoulders and stopping her pacing. "I'll be the first to admit 
that Kiyone's taking her time with this fuse, but there's probably a 
good reason. Maybe she can't find it, or something."
	Sasami sighed in resignation. "Yeah, maybe you're right."
	Three seconds later, she resumed the pacing.
	It was shortly thereafter that the front door opened. At that, 
the gathered group clambered over each other to see Kiyone enter.
	"Kiyone, where have you been?" Sasami admonished. "We were 
worried about you!"
	"Yeah, Kiyone," Achika added. "Where did you go for that thing? 
Taiwan?"
	"Indonesia," Tokimi politely corrected.
	"Whatever." Achika approached Kiyone and took the fuse off her.
	"I'm sorry, everyone," Kiyone said, flatter than usual. "I had 
to go to the other side of town to find it."
	"I can tell," Tenchi replied. "You look beat. Come in and sit 
down before you collapse."
	As Kiyone entered the living room, Achika was once again sat at 
the guts of the defunct karaoke machine. Soon after Kiyone sat, 
Achika took the new fuse from its packaging, visually checked it, and 
inserted it into its housing.
	And as she did, both she and Kiyone flinched. While Kiyone 
responded no further, Achika, having felt some discomfort she 
couldn't quite put a name to, dismissed it with the assumption that 
she trapped her finger between the fuse and its mooring clip, and 
instinctively sucked it a little. A few minutes later, she had 
reassembled the machine, and was in the process of reconnecting the 
cables around the back.
	While she was doing that, Mihoshi noticed that the power lead 
extension for the machine was unplugged from the wall. She deduced 
Achika would need it plugged in, and so reinserted the plug.
	Unbeknown to her, she had picked the worst possible time; 
Achika happened to be holding onto the other end of that lead. Under 
normal circumstances, this would not be a problem, but in this case, 
as soon as the plug was inserted, the standard Japanese household 
power supply – plus a hell of a lot more for good measure - got 
channelled through one very unlucky 17-year-old. For a good few 
seconds, Achika got flash-fried by the power surge, before being 
thrown across the room and landing in a smouldering heap.
	"What the hell was that?!" Tenchi exclaimed as he scrambled to 
his feet and ran to Achika. Misao, Sasami and Tokimi joined him, but 
Kiyone did not respond.
	"Achika? You okay?" Tokimi asked, prodding her friend, and 
getting a residual aftershock in the process.
	"Itai…" Achika whimpered in reply.
	"I'll bet," Tokimi retorted.
	Tenchi had gone over to the back of the karaoke machine, and 
was looking for what could have electrocuted Achika. Save for the 
unplugged power lead, he found nothing. He plugged the cord into its 
socket at the back of the KX3962, and heard the karaoke machine's 
reassuring power-up beep.
	"Wow, Achika, you did it!" Tenchi said with joy. "Thanks a 
lot!"
	Achika managed to stick a thumb-up out of her crumpled heap. 
"No problem…"
	And at that moment, the door opened again, and two VERY drunk 
women spilled in, singing loudly and out of tune. "…They call the 
rising sun… And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy—"
	"Hey, we're girlsh!" one of them said.
	"Nitpicker!" the other one replied.
	"…Many a poor girl…" they attempted to resume the song they 
were slaughtering. "…And god, I know I'm one…hic!"
	On their way into the house, Misaki and Chihiro ran into a 
brick wall. Then, after reversing away from the walls of the hallway, 
they ran into Tenchi and Sasami. The stand of the Kawai family was 
quickly supplemented by Achika.
	"And where have you two been?" Tenchi and Achika said in near 
unison.
	Chihiro began. "We were jusht shinging at thish carry—"
	"Karaoke," Misaki, who wasn't much better, offered a 
correction.
	"Carry-okie bar, and we, uh…"
	"We, uh…"
	"We jusht got very…"
	"Very…"
	"Very…"
	"Very…"
	"We get the idea!" Achika stopped them before this ended up 
taking all night.
	"Mom, did you try to drink Mrs Kekoi under the table?" Sasami 
asked.
	It took Chihiro all of 30 seconds to process that one. "What're 
you shaying? I only had a few…"
	"Yeah. A few breweries…" Sasami replied under her breath. "Mom, 
you should go to bed and sleep it off."
	"YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!! YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER!!!" 
Chihiro barked on the verge of incoherency, taking Sasami's concern 
entirely the wrong way.
	"Chihiro Kawai, you do not talk to your father like that!" 
Tenchi barked with a gruff voice. "Now you march yourself up those 
stairs and go to your room!"
	"Yes, Daddy."
	As Chihiro marched up the stairs, Misaki watched her. "Now 
there's a woman who can't hold her liquor," she said, perfectly 
lucid. "Maybe I should've stopped her at nine…"
	She didn't notice the astonished looks she was receiving from 
everyone.

	Biff looked at the screen, and grinned.
	"It's working…" he purred with delight. "Dear god, it's 
working… The standardisation is spreading like wildfire…"
	And indeed it was. His screen showed a political map of the 
world. Each nation was coloured according to the degree of 
standardisation – red for none, green for total. Far too many of the 
countries were going green.
	"Billions of computers across the world… and billions of users 
slaved to them… my God, it's glorious. Soon, the whole world will be 
standardised… and I will lead it! BWAHAHAHA—"
	His thunder was promptly stolen by a computer beeping in his 
ears. He quickly gathered himself, and vacated his seat once again. 
Returning to the heavily armoured wall, he placed his hand on it. The 
beeping in his ears resumed, chirping in a very cute way.
	"Yes, yes, I understand…" he said. "You are growing, my child…"
	He received more cheerful beeping in reply. Biff smiled with an 
eclectic mix of sheer insanity, and paternal pride.
	Then the beeping turned angry, and so too did Biff's demeanour 
change. "You found the energy spectrum I told you to look for?!"
	The beeping conveyed what could only be an affirmative.
	"No, no, no, no, NO!!!" Biff screamed. "Those little bitches 
are not going to spoil my plans this time!! Where are they?!"
	The beeping resumed.
	"There's only one signal? Where?"
	The beeping gave a reply.
	"Okayama, eh? And you say this source is extremely powerful?"
	Another affirmative.
	"Hmm… we'll have to approach this one carefully. Send in the 
drones."
	The beeping took on a wry, almost sly tone.
	"We have one in their midst already? Outstanding! Activate it."

	Washu's crab was once again at the computer. It had decided 
against consulting the phone book, and instead opted for the most 
reliable method of locating magical energy known – Washu's locator.
	The antennae Washu had previously used were destroyed at the 
last apartment, so the crab had jerry-rigged something MacGyver-style 
using a coat hanger, a signal booster, duct tape, and a toothbrush. 
It had carried the device around the room a little until it got a 
good signal. Now, it just needed to pinpoint its location.
	And it very quickly did.
	"Okay," it said to itself, "I have their location, I have a 
solution to the 'standardisation'… I think that all checks out. I 
should get moving before the situation gets any worse…"

	"YOU drank Mrs Kawai under the table?" Achika was stunned.
	"Who else would?" Misaki replied. "Well, actually, she 
challenged me, and I accepted. She lost it after about ten, but she 
would insist on going for sixteen."
	You look none the worse for wear," Tenchi added.
	"Yeah, my mom's always had a very high tolerance for alcohol," 
Achika explained.
	"But you came in no better than she did!" Sasami asked.
	"Heh… It just took a little longer for me to dismiss the 
effects… that, and I was acting."
	Once again, Misaki was getting looks of astonishment from the 
assembled group.
	"Come on! She was plastered! I had to act that way so she 
wouldn't get embarrassed!"
	"Mom, she was out of her mind," Achika reasoned. "She could 
have paraded across town butt-naked and singing Bad Touch and she 
wouldn't have cared."
	As this was going on, no one noticed what Kiyone was doing. At 
first, she sat quietly on the sofa, completely disaffected by 
everything that happened. Then, she slowly rose to her feet, 
approached the group… and began to strangle Misaki.
	The assembled group was stunned by this completely unexpected 
event. It took them a few seconds to recover, and a few more to 
motion to try and break the two women up. Misaki was trying to get 
Kiyone off her, but even her considerable strength couldn't dislodge 
the hands compressing the vital conduits traversing her throat.
	Kiyone simply removed one hand from Misaki's throat, moved the 
other around to compensate, and, with one swift motion, sent the 
group attempting to restrain her flying across the living room, along 
with any furniture they happened to crash into en route. Tenchi was 
unlucky enough to hit his head a little harder than the others.
	Misaki could briefly see her cheeks out of the bottom of her 
eye, and could see them turning blue. This was only briefly, as very 
soon afterwards, her vision started to grey-out, and she began to 
slip into unconsciousness.
	Just as her mind finally shut down, she could hear something 
crash through the window.
	Indeed, an object flew through the window at great speed. 
Achika was just picking herself up from being hurled into one of the 
karaoke machine's woofers, so when she caught sight of the 
projectile, she put it down to a hallucination brought on by 
concussion. She shook her head, rubbed her eyes, and looked again.
	So much for concussion.
	Stood on top of the upturned sofa, amidst shards of glass, was 
a cutefied red crab, wearing desert combat fatigues, with camouflage 
paint around its face, a grenade belt strapped around its body, 
Washu's heart laptop on its back, and something that looked akin to a 
miniature M-16 in its pincers. And, although one would be hard-
pressed to confirm this, Achika was sure that it had a kind of 
Schwarzenegger-esque expression.
	"Knock-knock!" the crab announced, wryly, falling short of 
emulating the Austrian accent.
	Kiyone dropped the unconscious Misaki, who fell to the floor. 
She now turned her attention to this strange, and seemingly 
ineffectual newcomer. A swift kick would send it flying.
	The crab was prepared. It brought its weapon to bear on Kiyone, 
and fired two shots. Instead of bullets, the weapon fired bright 
green energy projectiles, which struck true on Kiyone's chest and 
stomach. After flinching in response to the impact of the 
projectiles, Kiyone resumed her zombie-like advance… until the bolts 
activated. She convulsed as she was engulfed by a green electrical 
storm, covering her from head to toe. She writhed in vain to escape 
it, but could not. It held her firmly.
	As this went on, Achika felt a pain in her head. Rapidly, this 
pain grew exponentially, until it became excruciating, then surpassed 
any describable precedent. Achika's attempts to contain her agony 
were quickly defeated, and she cried out, collapsing to the floor and 
clutching the sides of her head. Sasami and Tokimi quickly came to 
their friend's aid, just as Kiyone, too, emitted a tortured howl.

	Biff, too, was prostrate with pain. Pain as though someone had 
cut off all his limbs, poured salt and nitric acid into the wounds, 
put him into a blast furnace and sautéed him until tender. "Nnnnnn… 
nnnnoooo…. Why….?" he only just managed to push past the blockade of 
agony in his mind. "Sh… she's gonnnne!"

	After the most agonising thirty seconds that Sasami had ever 
had to witness, her friends' cries of pain fell silent. The 
electrical anomaly that had engulfed Kiyone fell silent, allowing her 
to fall, unconscious, next to Misaki. Achika, meanwhile, was still on 
her knees, and clutching her head to dull the fading pain, breathing 
heavily, and still sobbing from the pain in between breaths. Tokimi 
cradled her friend as she pulled herself together.
	"What was all that about?" Tokimi voiced a number of emotions 
with her query, and not the least of them was worry. She received no 
answer. There was no one there who could give her one.
	Except, of course, for the crab, who had scurried onto Sasami's 
shoulder. Once here, he whispered into her ear. "Your friend will be 
fine in a moment or two, but we need to talk. Grab your friend, the 
bird, and the cabbit and follow me to your room." With that, it 
scuttled away, and up the stairs.
	Sasami quickly formulated a plan, and executed it. "I'll take 
Achika up to my room, she needs to lie down." She took Achika's right 
hand, and covertly tapped her palm twice with her little finger. 
Achika gripped her hand in reply. This was a signal they had agreed 
upon when non-verbal communication was necessary.
	"Can you walk, Achika?" Sasami asked.
	Achika rose to her feet, a little unsteadily at first but 
quickly regained her balance. "Yeah… yeah, I think so," she replied, 
still sounding a little groggy. "Thanks, Tokimi. I'm okay now."
	"Need any help?" Tokimi asked.
	"No, thanks, we're okay. Just keep an eye on my mom and Kiyone 
till they wake up, okay?"
	Tokimi didn't discount this reaction toward Kiyone, but it 
still surprised her. "I'd have thought you'd want blood after what 
she's just done."
	"For doing something I've often considered doing? Not really. 
Besides, I'm sure there's a logical explanation to all this…" As she 
and Sasami turned to head for the stairs, Achika added under her 
breath, "At least, I hope there is."
	On the way, Sasami faced Ryo-ohki, and then Rumiya, giving the 
bird a cold, begrudging address. She then cast her eyes toward the 
stairs, silently gesturing for them to follow. The cabbit and the 
bird did as requested, and took off after the two girls.

	They entered Sasami's bedroom. Nothing much out of place in 
here, apart from the laptop and weapons chest of drawers, the open 
panty drawer… The assembled group went to investigate further, and 
found the crab ferreting around in there. Rather perturbed, Sasami 
reached in and fished the crab out for all to see.
	"You little hentai!" Achika admonished.
	"Sorry, sorry," the crab replied. "Could you put me down now?"
	Sasami put the crab back on the top deck of the drawers, but 
before it could dip its claws back in, she slammed it shut with a 
bang.
	"So what is this about, anyway?" the blue-haired girl asked. 
"What's going on here?"
	"I will explain. But first, can one of you operate this?" The 
crab slid the laptop forward. "Washu uses a rather archaic operating 
system on her computer, and, well, the lack of fingers does kind of 
make it difficult."
	"Um… not me, I'm afraid," Sasami replied. "My computing 
experience stretches as far as making CDs… and playing FreeCell…"
	"We're in the same boat, dude," Rumiya answered for himself and 
Ryo-ohki, holding up his wings as his compatriot held up his paws. 
"Pity we can't grab oars."
	"I can do it," Achika replied. "But Washu using an old OS? 
That's like saying NASA's running the Wright brothers' plane."
	Achika flipped the power switch on the side and waited for the 
computer to boot. As it did, and ran through the BIOS and threw up 
the splash screen, Achika was forced to agree with the crab. "Well 
I'll be… She uses OpenBEE. She might as well be using an abacus."
	"OpenBEE?" Sasami asked.
	"A very buggy operating system. She's got the new version, but 
with all this semi-functioning stuff on it… it is not a l33t box."
	"Leet?" Rumiya inquired, perplexed.
	"No, Ru, not leet. l33t," Achika corrected. (In actuality, they 
sounded identical.) "l33t is this thing you do when you, well, 
0\/\//\/z someone, you know? You get me?"
	"Um, no," Ryo-ohki replied. "In truth, you're starting to scare 
us."
	"Good…" Achika said, a rather evil look emerging on her face. 
"ph34r… PH34R M4 L33T N3KK1D SK1LLZ!"
	At that point, the others were ready to run, when Achika 
cracked up. "C'mon! I'm kidding!"
	Shortly after that, the computer finished loading its OS, and 
Achika began to use it. "Okay, what am I looking for?"
	"Just look for something on symbiosis," the crab replied.
	"Okay, where's the search system on this…?" Achika trailed off 
for a minute, looked thoughtful, then came back and quickly clicked 
on icon after icon after icon. Within seconds, she'd found a series 
of video files in a folder, and clicked on a file that would run them 
all in sequence.
	The screen went blank, and the title "Scientific Research 
Centre of Japan" faded in. Below it was the subtitle "New User 
Interfaces for Electronics Systems – Project SYM56644 – Subconscious-
Level Machine/Human Symbiosis – Project Leader Washu F. Kobayashi"
	"Whoa, that was fast!" Sasami gasped in amazement.
	"d00d, j00 0wnz," Ryo-ohki said, patting Achika on the back. 
"Did I get that right?"
	"Close enough, but it made too much sense to be truly l33t," 
Achika replied, as she sat back and watched the movie. "…And you 
didn't use enough keyboard symbols."
	"How the hell could she tell…?" Ryo-ohki asked himself under 
his breath.
	The title screen faded, to reveal a computer engineering 
laboratory, complete with lots of eerie machine with flashing lights, 
and subordinates milling around. Front and centre, and facing the 
camera, was Washu.
	"We're recording these files in lieu of written notes," Washu 
began, as her mad look flashed across her face "because written notes 
suck!" She returned to normal. "Anyway, on with the show:
	"We were commissioned to begin research into new methods of 
controlling electronic devices, with particular emphasis on making 
the new interface universal, easily accessible, intuitive, and quick 
to respond. We tried various approaches to this, but most required 
the constant use of additional hardware, as well as additional 
training in the operation of the hardware. Most end-users could 
neither afford, nor spare the time to train for these.
	"Our final solution was inspired, of all things, by a 
children's book."
	At this, everyone facefaulted.
	"After reading the novel 'The Dark Season', I got the idea of 
possibly being able to meld the operation of the computer into the 
subconscious mind of the user. By doing this, operating the computer 
would require no more mental overhead than, say, moving your arm to 
grab a cup." With that, the on-screen Washu reached forward and 
grabbed a mug of coffee with the motto "World's Greatest Scientific 
Genius" on the side, took a sip, replaced it, and went on.
	"In effect, the machine and the user establish a 'symbiosis', 
wherein they communicate commands and responses between each other at 
the subconscious level, much like one receives the sense of touch. 
The process of setup is actually quite simple, and requires two 
things inherent to electronic equipment and all life forms – their 
inherent EM field. To set up this symbiosis, the machine must 
polarise its partner's EM field to match its own – in effect, 
formatting the user. A few electrical modifications are also made to 
the brain's lower regions, to insert processing regions for what 
could be considered a new limb."
	The realisation began to dawn on all who watched as to what was 
happening… and to Achika especially.
	"After the setup is complete, the new interface can be used 
immediately. The computer will listen to the user and pick up any 
request it, or the user, feels it can fulfil. It will then 
automatically execute that operation, where necessary surreptitiously 
querying the user for additional input, and return the results to the 
user, who will act upon it accordingly."
	That clinched it for Achika. It explained in one fell swoop why 
she felt the location of the file she was watching, how it had 
responded so quickly and effortlessly. "Oh, my god… it must have 
happened to me. I must have gotten hold of this symbiosis program in 
some way."
	"Cool! You really are computer friendly!" Rumiya chirped. 
Achika flashed him a look to inform him that she was most definitely 
not amused. Disturbed was more like it.
	"However, our early tests worked more than we anticipated. 
Because all electronic equipment in Japan works on the same EM 
frequency, it comes to pass that a person formatted for symbiosis can 
connect with any sufficiently intelligent electronic device, and 
control it in a similar manner."
	"Does that include…?" Sasami began.
	Achika finished for her. "…A certain Pathfinder KX3962 fully-
integrated karaoke hi-fi system with Super Quantum Hyper-Mega-Giga-
Tera Digital Signal Processing Environmental Audio reverb? I would 
hazard an educated guess and say…" She then began to bawl. "Oh, crap, 
I killed your mom's karaoke machine!!"
	"But you fixed it… that's all that matters. Just don't mention 
this to my mom, or you'd better pick what colour envelopes you want 
the pieces of your carcass to be mailed home in."
	The filmed Washu went on. "We hope that this new technology 
will improve computer literacy among the public, and be used further 
afield to enable all to use computers with sufficient ease, 
especially those with disabilities and paralysis."

	"Ugh… my head…" Kiyone clutched at the sides of her head in an 
attempt to lessen a dull pain that seemed to run through her whole 
brain. She attempted to probe her memory for what had happened to 
her. Her last memory was of being in that hardware store, asking for 
the fuse. "Must've caught too much varnish fumes…" she surmised. 
"They really gotta fix that—"
	Kiyone's attempts to raise to her feet were met with someone 
shouting "BACK OFF!", which hurt her head even more, and someone 
pushing her back forcefully. She still had her eyes closed, so she 
thought now would be a good time to open them.
	What she saw didn't tally. She was now back home. The karaoke 
machine was reassembled. There was broken glass and upturned 
furniture strewn across the room. She saw Tenchi laid against the 
cabinet that supported the laser disc collection like a ragdoll, a 
rather fetching bruise on his left temple. She also saw Misaki, 
collapsed on the floor, her face recovering from cyanosis.
	But the strangest part was Tokimi, sat on top of her, wearing a 
look somewhere between fear and distrust, and holding a rather large 
kitchen knife with the pointy end aimed at her. "Tokimi, what the--?" 
she began to ask.
	"Shut up!" Tokimi replied, with a hint of desperation in her 
voice. "I don't know what you were trying to pull, but I'm not going 
to let you do it again!"
	"What the hell do you mean?!" Kiyone replied, thoroughly 
confused. "I have no idea what you're talking about! What did I do?"
	Another groggy groan rang out, as Misaki started to regain 
consciousness. Tokimi sighed with relief. "At least she's okay… Can 
someone look after Mrs Kekoi for me? I have my hands full here."
	The only two conscious people in the room were Misao and 
Mihoshi. Mihoshi was sat on the sofa with a look like that of a deer 
caught in headlights, issuing a terrified whimper. She was obviously 
not going to be much help, so that left Misao, who went to Misaki's 
side and attempted to help the woman to a sitting position.
	"Oh, thanks…" Misaki said, groggily, as Misao did what she 
could to help. When Misaki finally got to a sitting position, she saw 
exactly who had helped her… and promptly snatched her body away from 
her, once again giving her that glare of hostility. Misao appeared to 
pay the glance no heed.
	"What in god's name happened here?" Kiyone asked, rather 
distressed.
	"What, you mean you don't know?" Tokimi retorted, her voice 
laden with sarcasm and disbelief. "I would've thought strangling Mrs 
K and then throwing us into the furniture would have left some 
lasting impression!"
	"WHAT?! When did I do this?"
	Tokimi's normally infinite patience was beginning to run out. 
"Oh, for god's sake, Mutsumi Otohime, drop the amnesia shtick, it's 
wearing thin. Will somebody call the damn police already?!"
	"It's not shtick, Tokimi, I really don't have a clue what 
you're talking about! You're saying I did this?!"
	After sitting there for a few minutes, trying to process the 
events and avoid Misao like a leper, Misaki came out with a sudden, 
and completely irrelevant outburst: "WHERE'S MY LITTLE ACHIKA?!!"
	"She's okay, Mrs K," Tokimi replied. "She's upstairs with 
Sasami. Doing god knows what…"
	On that, Misaki scrambled to her feet and dashed up the stairs.
	"How the hell does she put up with her…?" Tokimi asked herself. 
"All right, up," she gestured to Kiyone with the knife, and got off 
her.
	Kiyone got up and snatched the knife out of Tokimi's pensive 
grip. "For god's sake, woman, put that down!" she then threw the 
knife away and went after Misaki, leaving Tokimi and Misao. Shrugging 
to each other, they too followed, leaving the gibbering Mihoshi and 
Tenchi, who himself was beginning to regain consciousness, to their 
own devices. 

	The crab tapped a key on the laptop, stopping the playback. It 
then took a stance in front of the screen to take over the 
explanation. "Girls, this is the situation: someone has usurped the 
symbiosis program. They have changed it, warped it beyond its 
original premise. Now, instead of the user controlling the machine, 
the machine controls the user. Your friend downstairs was claimed by 
this, and that's what made her attack you."
	"YAY!" Achika cheered. "A logical explanation! Woohoo!"
	Ryo-ohki looked concerned. "But who would do something like 
this?"
	"It'd better not be who I think it is…" Rumiya growled.
	The crab went on. "Are any of you familiar with a man called 
Biff Standard?"
	Sasami's face, along with that of Ryo-ohki and Rumiya, fell 
like Hindenburg. "Not him!" Sasami exclaimed. "It couldn't be him! 
He's in an asylum! But, in hindsight, this seems to fit his MO."
	"Just a minute, hold everything," Achika interjected. "How the 
heck do you know Biff Standard?"
	"We fought him a year or so ago. He tried to create some way 
misguided utopia by 'standardising' the world's computers and its 
users, and crashing the moon into the Earth so he could rebuild the 
world in his own image. Luckily we whupped his butt before he could 
finish his plan."
	"Evidently you didn't hit him hard enough… or too hard, I don't 
know. So I'm to assume that Biff Standard has taken this program and 
adapted it to his own means."
	"That is correct," the crab retorted. "He's trying to resurrect 
his standardisation plan by using this symbiosis program as a Trojan 
horse to slave all computers on the network to his central mainframe, 
and the users of those computers to their own machines. Net result: 
standardisation."
	"Unless we stand in his way, right?"
	"Right," the crab replied. "Well, more specifically, you. 
Because you, too, have been affected by the symbiosis program, but 
not to the extent of your friend. You remain in control of yourself 
and your actions. You will be the vehicle by which we will defeat the 
standardisation program."
	"But how do we do that?"
	"Well, there are two ways. One is by using weapons similar to 
the weapon with which I shot your friend, which undoes the 
'formatting' of the symbiosis program."
	"Oh. Well, you'd better sedate everyone affected before you do. 
Most people would sooner thank you to kill them than put them through 
anything remotely resembling what I went through."
	"That brings up something that I'm curious about," Sasami piped 
up. "Why did Achika feel the pain while Kiyone was being affected?"
	"Because Kiyone and I must have been connected by some point," 
Achika retorted. "Either an electronic device in the room, or a 
remote central communication point – maybe even the origin of this 
thing. And this symbiosis must work both ways… just like the user 
considers the computer an extra limb, the computer considers the user 
an extra input device, and losing that connection is like cutting off 
an arm or a leg – it hurts, Sasami. It really hurts."
	"Exactly," the crab added. "And it's this communication that 
will be its downfall, and the crux of the second method. When a 
number of people become vampires, what is the quickest way to reverse 
that?"
	"By killing the head vampire," Achika replied. Shortly 
thereafter, the meaning of that dawned on her. "A-ha! I get it! You 
want me to take out the central point!"
	"Precisely. All you have to do is order it to cleanse the 
programming from it. That will carry on to all of the people affected 
by it – all 3 billion of them. It's the only way it can practically 
be done."
	"Okay, that I can understand. Manually zapping three billion 
people is a little more than something a crab and two Magical Girls 
can do. But, this begs one question: where do we attack?"
	The crab and Sasami furnished Achika with her answer in unison: 
"Akihabara."
	Sasami went on to explain. "Biff's Japanese headquarters are 
located there. And if the authorities have any sense, he wouldn't be 
allowed to leave the country."
	"Sasami, given the current climate, I think the words 
'authorities' and 'sense' would be ill-used within the same 
sentence," Achika interjected.
	"True enough, Achika," the crab said. "But Sasami is right – 
Standard is running this show from Akihabara. His central system is 
located there… along with thousands of the standardised who will 
invariably do anything to stop you… like your friend downstairs."
	"So we have to fight through hordes of heavily-armed zombies 
without getting killed, to reach an installation, reprogram it, 
destroy it, and get out of there before all hell breaks loose? Why 
does all of this sound disturbingly familiar?"
	"We can offer you some protection," Rumiya said. "We should be 
able to program something similar to the deformatting weapon into 
your batons. We'll try and adapt the automatic defence system so 
it'll shield you from any reciprocal effects."
	"If you can't do that, just be sure to have lots of 
painkillers," Achika smiled, but she was deadly serious.
	"I'll work with the cabbit on that," the crab said. "Washu and 
I have been observing your methods. We could help each other out."
	"Very well," Ryo-ohki replied. "We'd best get on it. We might 
need to use you as a testbed, Achika."
	Achika didn't respond. She appeared to be straining to hear 
something.
	"Uh… Achika…?" Sasami repeated to try and get her attention.
	"Shh…" Achika warned. She then held up four fingers, tugged at 
her ear, and gestured to the door. This silent communiqué meant that 
there were four people attempting to listen in through the door, 
something that Ryo-ohki verified. Though with all the noise coming 
from the door, it wasn't that much of a feat to figure it out.

	Misao, Misaki, Tokimi and Kiyone had indeed placed their ears 
flat against the closed door to Sasami's room, trying to find the 
best acoustic positions on it.
	"What can you hear?" Tokimi asked.
	"Just you at the moment," Kiyone whispered. "Pipe down a 
little, will ya?"
	"Shh!" Misaki hissed. "There's someone coming to the door!"
	"Yeah, I can hear the footsteps," Misao added.

	On the other side, Achika was ponderously approaching the door 
with a silly straight-legged walk, with a sly grin on her face, 
humming a little ditty to herself. She stopped at the door for a 
second or two, and then, in one swift, fluid motion, produced an air 
horn, brought it up close to the door, and fired. The horn was loud 
enough in the small room, but probably deafening to whomever had 
their ears on the door. Sure enough, after the short blast, the sound 
of four people falling to the floor carried through into the room.
	"Well, that took care of that little problem…" Achika told 
herself as she casually discarded the can. As she did so, she caught 
the somewhat bemused looks of Sasami, Ryo-ohki, Rumiya, and quite 
probably the crab – all of whom had grown large sweatdrops. "Why are 
you looking at me like that? C'mon, guys, we have work to do." She 
opened the door and stepped over the assortment of bodies at its 
foot.
	The crab hopped off the chest of drawers and scuttled out after 
Achika. Ryo-ohki was not too slow in following. Sasami got up, in 
preparation to follow him, but before she could gain movement 
velocity, Rumiya had flown ahead and collided with the door, feet 
first. This had the effect of closing the door, and, almost exactly 
like the eponymous bird of Poe's poem, he had perched himself atop 
the doorframe.
	"We need to talk," he said.
	"Do we, now?" Sasami said disdainfully. "Well, I don't feel 
like talking right now, and especially not with you, so if you'll 
excuse me—"
	Rumiya rolled his eyes. "Look, Sasami, I like you. Even though 
the feeling is definitely not mutual, I consider you a friend. But if 
you don't sit down and listen to me, I'll peck your saucer-like eyes 
out."
	Sasami sat. "All right, talk."
	"You don't like me much, do you?"
	The young girl snorted. "Is it that obvious?" she said with 
copious sarcasm.
	"Why?"
	"Well, let me see… maybe it's the fact that you work for 
Ramia?"
	Rumiya flinched at the mention of that name, but was quick to 
retort. "Worked, Sasami. Worked. I don't any more. I refuse to work 
for someone with the level of disdain for human life as… her…"
	"Really? Well, you took your time coming to that conclusion. 
Why couldn't you have come to it sooner? It would have saved me a lot 
of trouble, and considerable property damage… or have you really come 
to that conclusion?"
	Rumiya looked puzzled. "Excuse me?"
	"You heard. I don't think you've changed sides at all. I think 
you're some kind of Trojan horse. I think you're just her to break us 
up so Ramia will have no resistance." Sasami got to her feet, and 
marched toward Rumiya, almost leaping down his throat were it not for 
his higher vantagepoint. "To put it into an image you can understand, 
I DO NOT TRUST YOU. Am I making myself clear?"
	Rumiya was speechless. It took him a few seconds to resolve 
himself, but when he did… "How dare you."
	"Excuse me?"
	"You heard!" Rumiya spat Sasami's words back at her. "How dare 
you accuse me of being a Trojan horse? What, you think I disown my 
own sister and throw the girl I love to the lions on a daily basis?! 
You want to know how long I've been trying to fight her? Longer than 
you've been carrying your baton! I have tried to neutralise psychotic 
scheme after psychotic scheme for years, but it's not exactly easy 
when your opponent outclasses you in magic and physical strength. 
I've seen Ramia enslave people, plot the destruction of planets, and 
even go as far as attempt genocide, and every time I even voiced 
dissent… you remember that blast she gave me when you and Misa teamed 
up against Standard the last time? I've taken much, much worse."
	Now it was Sasami's turn to be speechless.
	"And you know why I took it? Because if not for me, it would 
probably be Misa taking the beatings. I couldn't let her bear that 
kind of treatment! But Ramia did it to her anyway! Even with me right 
there, she still did it! I left because I was fighting a losing 
battle. I came aboard this banana boat because Ryo-ohki believes your 
leet hacker friend out there just might have what it takes to nail 
Ramia for good. THAT is my only agenda, Sasami. THAT is why I'm here 
– to train Achika, just like Ryo-ohki trains you. I'd be perfectly 
happy to go away and leave you to it, but I'm sorry. I can't. Am I 
making myself clear?"
	Sasami could only nod an affirmative.
	"Good. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get with Ryo-ohki and 
come up with some way of making sure you and Achika make it out of 
this zombie slugfest with a little more than your sentience intact." 
With that, Rumiya lifted off and headed for the door… not realising 
it was closed. Sasami opened it before the predictable consequences 
could ensue.
	Thus, Sasami was left in her room. Left with a few home truths 
to digest. She had treated Rumiya terribly, she readily admitted 
that. She could no longer use the time-honoured excuse "He deserved 
it" – he didn't deserve that on top of everything his sister had put 
him through, plus leaving Misa. Rumiya was just doing a job, with the 
slim hope that perhaps together, they could defeat Ramia. If the bird 
deserved anything, it was a break.
	But could she bring herself to trust him? After all, wasn't 
this the bird that accompanied Misa on all her reigns of terror? Was 
this not the brother of Ramia – though precisely how his parents had 
one girl and one bird defied even her basic knowledge of biology. 
Rumiya had said as much, he tried to stop her, even though said 
fighting did, on numerous occasions, look more like Gandhi-esque 
passive resistance and token nuggets of playing Misa's conscience. As 
far as Sasami saw it, he did nothing of worth to stop what was 
happening, which to her was just as bad as committing the act itself. 
But it was more the association with her foes that made trusting 
Rumiya so hard to digest, brought on by the fact that her foes had 
switched sides and switched back again on countless occasions.
	She had her fingers burned so many times, she truly couldn't 
tell if Rumiya would watch their backs when it came to the crunch, or 
stab them in them.

	Two hours later saw a group of five assembled in the street 
outside Sasami's house. By this time, it had grown dark, so all the 
houses had closed their curtains, affording the two girls, the 
talking bird, the talking crab, and the talking cabbit a little 
privacy.
	"Okay, we've programmed a kind of firewall into Achika's 
baton," Rumiya explained. "What this will do is allow Achika to 
retain the power of interacting with electronics, but shield her from 
the unpleasant side-effects of a de-format."
	"We also added the de-formatting pulse to your batons' directed 
energy weapon system," Ryo-ohki added. "You don't have to do anything 
fancy to use it, just point 'n' click."
	Achika and Sasami clutched at their batons, nodding 
understanding to their companions' explanation. "And what about the 
prospect of us getting 'formatted'?" Sasami asked. "What do we do 
about that?"
	"For that, we went out and bought you these," the crab said, 
flourishing two pairs of sunglasses that still had their retail 
labels attached. Achika and Sasami each took a pair out of the crab's 
pincers. "Those sunglasses will block the radiation needed to 
initiate the formatting process."
	"Ooh, Ray-Bans," Achika bubbled. "You guys went all out – 
practical and stylish."
	"We try. Oh, you might want me to hold those while you 
transform, otherwise the process might cloak them."
	The girls handed the shades back to the crab, before standing 
again.
	"Well, let's get this show on the road," Achika said. "Sasami, 
after you."
	Sasami nodded, then lifted her baton. "Pretty Mutation…" Insert 
dramatic pause. "MAGICAL RECALL!"
	With the command uttered, the baton sprang to life. Sasami was 
lifted into the air for the obligatory nude transformation, as her 
clothes disappeared to be swiftly replaced by her Magical Girl 
costume. The baton attached itself to her wrist by means of a newly-
formed chain. Her powers came to her under a wave of euphoria. She 
was now Pretty Sammy.
	Achika gave her a smile of approval, before she lifted her own 
baton and issued her own transformation command – the one she made up 
last night. "Super Adorable Power – MAGICAL TRANSFORM!"
	Ryo-ohki was shaken out of staring at Sasami by that rather 
jarring line. "What the…? That's not the line I programmed into that 
baton!"
	It was too late. Achika was lifted and twirled into the air. 
Her rather cute ensemble disappeared, leaving her spinning butt-naked 
in mid air. As accompanied every transformation, Achika was washed 
over by an intense endorphin rush as her powers were unlocked, during 
which she lost any meaningful consciousness.
	When she came to, she was on the ground. As her senses 
realigned themselves, she could hear laughing. She turned to see 
Sasami, doubled up in hysterics.
	"What's so funny?" Achika asked her.
	Sasami could barely get a word out, but somehow succeeded 
between laughs. "Haha… take… Hah… a look… Heehee… at yourself! 
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
	Achika was thoroughly puzzled, but looked anyway. What she saw 
made her turn beet red.
	It appeared that the baton had thoughtfully taken her civvy 
clothes off, but forgot to put a costume back on. Achika was now 
standing in the middle of the street, totally naked apart from the 
ribbon in her hair and the baton attached to her wrist. She screamed 
out in embarrassment and horror, before making a dive behind a 
cluster of trashcans.
	Still laughing, Sasami followed her behind the refuse 
containers, to see her partner sat on the floor, hugging her legs to 
her chest and also covering her bosom with her arms, looking 
extremely embarrassed.
	"So this is what you meant by those 'l33t n3kk1d 5k1llz' of 
yours, is it?" Sasami laughed.
	"Touché, Mademoiselle Kawai. Touché," Achika replied. "What 
went wrong?"
	"I don't know," Ryo-ohki replied. "Probably the fact that you 
HACKED YOUR BATON?!"
	"Let me see," Rumiya said, taking Achika's baton and its 
attached arm, forcing Achika to reposition her other arm to 
adequately protect her modesty.
	In the meantime, to Achika's left, the crab had acquired itself 
a nice seat on a trashcan, and was staring intently at her. "What the 
hell are you staring at?" she asked. The crab didn't respond.
	"Yep, she broke it," Rumiya announced, as he looked over the 
now open baton. "She's rewritten the voice command database almost 
entirely."
	"What about the costume?" Achika asked.
	"She's made extensive modifications to the core programming," 
Rumiya went on.
	"Yes, now what about the costume?"
	"She's modified all of the system icons, replaced the UI OS 
with a Lunix distribution—"
	"Rumiya, I'm quite literally freezing my butt off here. Now 
before I start pressing more buttons, TELL ME WHERE MY COSTUME IS!"
	"…And she attempted to replace her costume pattern. The 
replacement failed."
	"Failed?! It said that the setting was saved okay!"
	"You tried to define it using pictures, didn't you?"
	"Yeah, what of it?"
	"That part of the program… doesn't work. You have to import 
specific costume pattern files or it won't take."
	"Then whose spectacular idea was it to leave an incomplete and 
bug-ridden program in a complete OS for a consumer device?"
	"Well, we weren't quite anticipating some enterprising hacker 
with a lot of free time on her hands poking her nose where it 
shouldn't be," Ryo-ohki admonished.
	"All right, point taken, my bad, sorry," Achika sighed. "Now 
what do we do? Any suggestions?"
	"I say leave it as is," chimed the crab, which resulted in 
Achika knocking it for six with the baton.
	"CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions."
	Rumiya milled it around for a second, then spoke. "Sasami, give 
me your baton."
	Sasami held her baton protectively, but Ryo-ohki silently 
gestured to her to do as Rumiya suggested. Reluctantly, she knelt 
beside Achika and handed the baton to Rumiya. Rumiya opened the 
baton's wrapping.
	"Ryo-ohki, you got a USB cable?" Rumiya asked. Ryo-ohki 
promptly conjured one up and donated it. Rumiya used his beak to plug 
the cable into the batons' respective ports.
	"What are you doing?" Sasami inquired.
	"I'm copying your costume pattern to Achika's baton and 
restoring the command database from a previous backup," Rumiya 
retorted. "It's the best solution we have until we can take the baton 
back to the shop and get it fixed." He pressed a few buttons that 
were hidden under a flap in Sasami's baton, which handily doubled as 
an LCD screen. The screen displayed a picture of Sasami's costume, 
her baton, a line moving from that icon to another baton with an icon 
of a broken costume image, and a progress bar that gradually crawled 
to the right. After a few seconds, the progress bar had reached its 
destination, and the broken costume icon was replaced by Sasami's 
costume. The words "upload complete" flashed a couple of times. The 
batons beeped reassuringly as if in confirmation, and then Achika's 
beeped a couple more times.
	"Now Achika's baton is resetting itself," Rumiya explained. 
"She'll get her costume right about… now."
	Almost immediately, just as Rumiya predicted, a new outfit 
materialised on Achika's naked body. Once it completed, Achika got to 
her feet to examine herself. She was now wearing an exact copy of 
Sasami's outfit, sized to fit her perfectly. "Now that's better," she 
said with a smile.
	"You think?" Sasami snorted with disbelief. "You're nuts."

	The two magical girls now walked out into the street, and 
struck a pose. They put on their sunglasses, checked they were snugly 
installed, and held their batons in both hands. The pose was 
virtually identical to that of the two main characters of Men in 
Black. Too bad no one was around to see it.
	Rumiya took his seat on Achika's right shoulder, as Ryo-ohki 
took a seat on Sasami's right. The crab stowed itself away in the bow 
on Achika's back.
	Achika launched into a speech. "It's an hour's flight to 
Akihabara. We're young. We're heavily armed. It's dark, and we're 
wearing sunglasses."
	"Hit it!" Sasami exulted.
	With that, the two magical girls and their passengers took off 
and flew away.
	Two seconds later, two crunching sounds, equivalent to a heavy 
object hitting a brick wall, rang out.
	"OW! Who put this building here?!"
	"Miya!"
	Perhaps it was a good thing that no one was around to see that.

	Washu had given up any attempt to resist long ago. As she sat, 
in this room in some nameless location, she could only wait and hope.
	The room was tiny, about four feet wide and six feet deep, with 
no furniture. The only light came from the tiny window laced with a 
reinforcing mesh. The silhouette of a human head that stood unmoving 
in that frame told her that she was under guard.
	She had woken up in this room after being abducted from her 
home by the salaryman, who had obviously been affected by some form 
of her symbiosis program. The symbiosis program that someone had 
bastardised and turned into a mind control device. And she had a good 
idea who that someone was.
	The fluorescent light on the ceiling flickered on, garishly 
lighting the eggshell white walls. It took Washu's vision a second to 
adjust, but she could now see that the silhouette in the window had 
disappeared, and she saw a new face in the door. Biff Standard's.
	The lock clicked as it was unlocked, and the door opened into 
the room. Biff followed it in, and closed it behind him.
	"Ah, Biff!" Washu said with mock glee. "I was just thinking 
about you."
	"I'm flattered, Washu," Biff replied. "I'm also happy to see 
that you've been a model prisoner. Keep this up and I might release 
you… once I have finished Standardising the world."
	Washu chuckled. "You know, I have to hand it to you, Biff. You 
really do have a knack of flawlessly executing your plans… no matter 
how deeply flawed the plan is."
	"Flawed? Why, no, my dear. This plan is flawless."
	"Really? Kinda dumb posting a weapon of world domination on the 
internet, ain't it? Not everyone's online, y'know."
	"I know that," Biff growled, a little affronted by this 
challenge. "But the beauty of this is that it's progressive. First, I 
conquer the online world. Then, I can use software on disc to convert 
users not connected to the Net. From there, I can simply order my 
drones to comb the Third World nations with laptops, bringing their 
people into my network. No one will escape my Standard world. And no 
one can stop me."
	"Don't be too sure, Biff," Washu smiled. "There'll be someone 
to stop you."
	"Oh, no they won't. Because I already have you."
	With that, Biff turned around, and tapped on the door. It 
opened, and he walked out, closing the door and locking it. The light 
was turned off, leaving Washu alone in the dark to contemplate what 
he had said. This little plan of his truly was universal, and if it 
had any chance of success, it would succeed here, where virtually 
everyone with a computer had an internet connection. And there were 
few people capable of stopping him – just herself, and she could do 
nothing, and two, at most four others.
	She just hoped they hadn't been Standardised.

	"Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow."
	Two magical girls landed somewhere in downtown Akihabara, 
looking very much the worse for wear. Their outfits were charred and 
tattered, they were slightly bruised, but their sunglasses hadn't 
moved a millimetre and still looked pristine.
	"Sammy, for future reference, flying through a jet engine is 
NOT fun," the tall one groaned.
	"Noted," the short one replied. "Are you okay, Ryo-ohki?"
	The blackened furball on her shoulder could only gibber a reply 
in abject terror.
	The charred bird on the tall girl's shoulder chimed in, himself 
not much better. "W-w-why c-c-c-couldn-n-n't y-y-you h-h-have j-j-
just l-l-left the s-s-sunglasses off until y-you got h-here?"
	"Hmm, good idea," the tall girl replied. "We'll take that under 
advisement." She tapped something on the object in her hand, which 
projected an energy field that cleaned the soot off of them and their 
outfits, restoring them  - and the creatures riding on them – to 
pristine condition.
	They could now survey their surroundings. The last time Sasami 
had been here, the streets were bustling with people. Now, they were 
effectively deserted. Only the beeping of computers from the local 
stores could be heard.
	"You know the way to Biff's headquarters, don't you, Achika?" 
Sammy asked.
	"Sammy, this is Akihabara. This is my Mecca. I literally sit on 
a rug five times a day and pray to here."
	"Okay…" Sammy sweatdropped.
	Achika pointed in a direction. "This way." She marched off in 
that direction, but Sammy stopped her.
	"Next time, oh L33t one, just head for the big building," Sammy 
mused, gesturing to the towering skyscraper a couple of blocks in the 
opposite direction to the one Achika was headed. Achika came about 
and walked in that direction.
	"Must've been that head-on with the 747," Achika surmised the 
reason as to her loss of direction. "Yeah, definitely the head-on 
with the 747."

	The walk to the Japanese branch of StandardSoft was as 
uneventful one. There appeared to be a few patrols the closer they 
got to it, but they seemed to pay them no heed. They just stood 
there, for the most part.
	Meeting no resistance, they finally arrived at the front door 
of the big building. "Well, this is it – StandardSoft Japan," Sammy 
proclaimed. "How do you propose we get in, Achika?" She got no reply. 
"Achika?" She searched around for her friend, and found her peering 
into the window of a store across the road.
	"WAI!" Achika shrieked like a little girl. "Lunix Mandark v12 
Deluxe 7-Disc Millennium Edition for 5,000 Yen! I have so gotta get 
that!"
	Rumiya pecked her ear. "Achika, we have time to shop AFTER we 
save the world! Now come on." He took off, with his talons lightly 
gripping Achika's shoulder, and flew off toward Sasami. He was 
effectively dragging her away.
	"Hai…" Achika replied, somewhere between absently and the tone 
of a disappointed child. Once far enough away from the store, Achika 
was focused enough to get back to Sasami under her own power.
	"So, how do you propose we get in?" Sasami asked again. She and 
Achika peered in through the glass doors, to the very spacious and 
sparsely guarded lobby.
	"I don't know… from the looks of it, and the way those guards 
were acting, they're not expecting us yet, but I have this sneaking 
suspicion the second we go in, we'll have a small army on us."
	"So?"
	"We don't go in through the front door. Lobbies are too 
spacious, too ornate. Far too much room for reinforcements to come in 
and make it difficult."
	"So how do we get in?" Rumiya asked.
	"The back door," Achika replied. "Loading docks are cramped at 
best. And they won't be expecting us."
	"Where the heck do you learn all this stuff, anyway?" Sasami 
asked, impressed.
	"Oh, I had a chat with the cute little online Pineapple in the 
window of that store with the sweet Lunix offer. I got it to suggest 
a few guerrilla tactics."
	"Oh," Sasami replied, a little redundantly. With that, they 
headed for the loading dock at the back of the building.

	As Achika had predicted, the loading dock was even less 
defended than the main entrance. The two girls sneaked into the area, 
making little noise.
	They turned a corner… and promptly bumped into an armed guard. 
His uniform suggested he was from the Army. Sasami expected this man 
to start firing, but he didn't even react.
	"Weird… they're ignoring us," Sasami whispered.
	"They will," Achika replied. "Until they consider us a threat."
	"And how do you know THAT?"
	"That, I couldn't tell you."
	They continued to approach one of the two loading bays on the 
raised platform. A quick peek revealed how the doors were controlled. 
"Hmm… motorised doors with computer-controlled passcode system," 
Achika concluded.
	"Can you open it?" Ryo-ohki asked.
	"I can try. Cover me." She approached one of the control panels 
at the side of the doors and placed a hand on it. She then went deep 
in thought as she attempted to interface with the computer.
	"'My mind to your mind…'" Rumiya mused. Achika shot him a 
sideways glare. "Sorry, but the way you're doing this looks so much 
like a Vulcan mind-meld."
	"It's a little more complicated than that," Achika whispered. 
"I'm hacking around inside the guts of this thing. If you distract me 
and I trip some safeguard or logic bomb, we'll have more than one 
armed zombie to worry about."
	"Sorry," Rumiya whispered back, coyly.
	Achika resumed her task, moving her eyes under half-closed 
eyelids as if speed-reading or visualising something – perhaps the 
lines of code in the computer she was interfaced with. Eventually, 
she opened her eyes and disconnected herself. "Damn!"
	"What's wrong?" Sasami asked.
	"It's no use. I think they must have anticipated a symbiotic 
hack, because the security on that computer is as tight as a drum. 
That, and the passcode is encrypted so much that for me to try and 
break it would drive me insane."
	"You mean more insane than you already are?" Sasami smiled. 
"Well, you know what they say. If at first you don't succeed, Miss 
Kekoi…"
	"Try, try again, Miss Kawai," Achika replied, completing the 
Bond film parody. "I suppose we could use the Magical Girl master 
key." She brought her baton up.
	"Now that will bring more than one armed zombie down around our 
ears."
	"We'll just have to hope they're still not expecting us in 
here. You de-format Soldier Boy over there, and I'll blow the door 
while the rest of them are caught up in the backwash."
	Sasami moved off and sneaked up behind the solitary guard. She 
brought her baton to bear on him and fired two de-format charges. The 
soldier finally responded, raising his rifle just as the de-format 
process took effect. He squeezed the trigger as he fell, narrowly 
missing Sasami as his unaimed gun fired. "All clear!" Sasami cried.
	"Got it!" Achika replied, running back a short distance to 
escape the blast radius of her own fire. She flourished her baton and 
called out a command, "SUPER… ADORABLE… FIRE!" She brought the device 
to aim at the door.
	The baton beeped in reply, but did nothing else.
	"Uh, Achika, I restored the command database to its original 
setting," Rumiya stated. "Try 'Adorable Ballista', instead."
	Achika cast the bird another glare, before raising the baton 
again. "ADORABLE… BALLISTA!"
	This time, when Achika brought the baton to aim, an energy 
projectile shot out the business end. The projectile shot toward the 
door and impacted with it, creating a ball of fire, smoke and dust. 
When it cleared, it revealed a large circular flaming hole where the 
door used to be.
	And behind that large flaming hole was a small, heavily armed 
army.
	"Sammy?" Achika said, not taking her eyes off the troops.
	"Yeah?" Sasami asked.
	"I, er, think they consider us a threat now."
	The small army was about to open fire, but the armed gathering 
all collapsed, one by one, in indescribable pain. Achika clapped her 
hands and glanced skyward. "Well, You sure picked a good time to 
throw in a network lag!" She addressed Sammy again. "C'mon, let's get 
going before they come round."

	In his wardroom, Biff was doubled up in pain once again, as yet 
another individual was ripped from his collective. "H-how issss 
thissss happennnnninnnngggg?" he attempted to force out.
	In his ears was a frantic, cacophonic beeping, as if whatever 
was causing it was also in pain. Eventually, the chaos became order 
as the beeping became communicative.
	"Don't ask, do it!" he screamed.

	Achika and Sasami's unimpeded progress into the building was 
short-lived. As all of the guards immobilised by the first de-
formatting began to recover, their stroll through the labyrinthine 
corridors of the became a rolling firefight. They were ascending via 
a staircase, which they were forced to leave on the 14th floor, and 
were trying to find somewhere to hole up. Unfortunately, the tidy 
corridors offered little furniture behind which they could hide.
	"Which way now?" Sasami cried out with desperation in her 
voice.
	"How am I supposed to know?! Do I look like a building plan?!" 
Achika cried back. She looked ahead and saw corridor as far as the 
eye could see… apart from an opening coming up on her right. "That 
hole in the wall looks good to me!"
	"Me too! Last one there gets Standardised!"
	Achika grunted as she put more energy into her run. "I… do NOT… 
need reminding… of the stakes!"
	The two girls pelted towards the hole in the wall at full 
speed, and when they reached it, executed a sideward flip that would 
make Lara Croft jealous. Now here, they were free to examine their 
new environment.
	Fortune was smiling on them once again. They had found 
themselves in a typing pool. With cubicles, desks, and offices to 
hide amongst. Better still, the silence suggested that it was empty. 
Achika smiled with relief, but was distracted when she heard 
something, a sort of cacophony of whispers. "Sasami, did you say 
something?"
	"No, why?" Sasami replied.
	Achika was about to retort, but was distracted by bullet fire 
hitting the wall behind them. "I don't think it matters! TAKE COVER!"
	Rumiya wisely took off from Achika's shoulder and Ryo-ohki 
clung on for his life as the girls promptly hurtled towards the mesh 
of cubicles and secreted themselves therein. When Achika holed 
herself up in her cubicle, she quickly realised that she wasn't 
alone. A man in a suit was sat in an office chair, staring blankly at 
his screen. He appeared to have not noticed her. It then occurred to 
her that the presumption upon which she surmised the pool to be empty 
– the lack of clattering keys – was irrelevant. This man was working 
with symbiosis. She formulated a plan.
	"Sorry to put you through this, Dilbert, but we need breathing 
space," she told the man, before de-formatting him. Hopefully the 
backwash from that would slow them down.
	The sustained, directed stream of weapons fire indicated that 
it had done nothing of the sort.
	Achika poked her head out of the cubicle to see about a dozen 
armed guards pour into the typing pool. One of the guards spotted her 
and opened fire. Achika was quick enough to retract her head behind 
the wall, but the desk and the terminal behind her wasn't so lucky.
	"Why aren't they affected by the de-format?" she asked herself.
	"Maybe they found a firewall like yours," a muffled, crabby 
voice rang out from her back. Achika reached into the bow in that 
area and plucked out one crab with a modified M-16.
	"Ah! I forgot you were in there!" Achika said. "Well, being as 
though you're here, you can help me stop those guys!"
	"No way, sister!" the crab protested. "I'm not stupid! I know 
that one crab with an M-16 versus a dozen humans with M-16s equals 
one dead crab!"
	"Will you please stop being so pessimistic?" Achika hissed. 
"Look!" She gestured to the desk and terminal adjacent to the cubicle 
opening. "They're not that bright! They're still firing at the same 
place I was earlier! And I'm leaning against a three-centimetre thick 
fibreglass wall! I think they'd have picked me off by now if they had 
any sense!"
	The crab milled it over. "You're right! Lemme at 'em!" It 
hopped onto the floor and began opening fire with his de-formatting 
rifle. Achika followed suit, firing de-format charges from her baton. 
One by one, the dozen men fell, until none were left.
	"Clean-up in aisle 5," Achika smirked as she surveyed the pile 
of prostrate, convulsing men.
	A flutter of wings heralded Rumiya's return as he landed back 
on Achika's shoulder. "With dry cool wit like that, you could be an 
action hero," he mused.
	"And where did you disappear to?" Achika asked him.
	"I was planning. Behind the water cooler." He summoned a 
Styrofoam cup full of water. "Want some?"
	Achika was about to take the cup when a scream rang out. Both 
she and Rumiya recognised its owner immediately: "SASAMI!" they cried 
out in unison, before heading off to its source, leaving the crab 
stood in the entrance to the cubicle.
	"Hey! Wait for me, dammit!" it said, before scuttling off after 
them.

	Sasami had de-formatted the denizen of her cubicle, but that 
was the least of her problems. The hordes of armed zombies coming at 
her through a door on the other end of the typing pool were a far 
more pressing issue.
	The baton, despite being digital, was not fully automatic. This 
meant, despite the point-and-click operation of the de-formatting 
weapon, one could not simply hold the trigger down and spray. Thus, 
Sasami was forced to wiggle her finger over the button repeatedly. 
Such constant work would eventually take its toll.
	And it did so at the least opportune moment. Sammy grabbed her 
right index finger and yelped in pain, allowing the baton to swing 
idly from its wrist chain.
	"Sammy, what's wrong?" Ryo-ohki asked.
	"My finger's got cramp!" Sasami yelled back over the sound of 
weapons fire. "It's from firing this so fast!"
	"Take cover, Sammy," Ryo-ohki replied. "I'm going to see if I 
can make a change to the baton and add some rapid-fire to it!"
	As instructed, Sasami dived back into her cubicle. When they 
holed themselves up, Ryo-ohki took the baton and opened it up. With 
his paws, he started pressing the large buttons on it very rapidly. 
After a few seconds, he closed up. "That ought to do the trick!"
	"Thanks!" Sasami enthused back as she got up and wheeled around 
the fibreglass wall. "And now on with the—"
	Her newly found bravado promptly opted to go on a coffee break 
when she saw what she was now confronting. About sixteen men with M-
16s, and one carrying a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. All of them 
pointed at her.
	"Oh, darn," Sasami said quietly aloud to herself, just a split 
second before this firing squad opened fire. Sasami could not return 
to the cubicle, so she was forced to dance around in the hail of 
gunfire.
	Then, wrapped up in that gunfire came one solitary rocket aimed 
for her head. Sasami faced the inbound threat, unable to move until 
Ryo-ohki deftly tugged her out of the way. He didn't pull her far 
enough, and the rocket's rear stabilising fins grazed her left cheek, 
before continuing on to the far wall and detonating.

	Just a few metres away from that explosion were Achika and 
Rumiya, who were forced to fall back for a second until the coast 
cleared.

	Whoever was controlling the zombies had obviously concluded 
that the rocket had finished Sasami off. They had all ceased fire.
	Sasami, however, was most definitely alive. Clawing her senses 
back, she faced the man with the rocket launcher, her eyes full of 
anger. She stared him down for three seconds, before letting out a 
battle cry. "KIYAAAAAA!!!!"
	Before any of them had a chance to react, Sasami was opening 
de-formatting fire like a woman possessed. "C'mon you little…! You 
want some of this?! Oh, you too?! C'mon, enough to go around!"

	The familiar 'bi-bi-bi-PHONG!' noise of the de-format weapon, 
and Sasami screaming blue murder, shot out across the typing pool as 
Sasami cut swathes through the guards. On hearing it, Achika and 
Rumiya accelerated through the maze of cubicles towards Sasami's 
position.
	When they got there, they were stunned. The only thing Rumiya 
could utter was "Holy shit!"
	The ground was littered with prostrate, convulsing people all 
undergoing the de-formatting process, and one extremely pissed 
magical girl stood among the carnage. She was still attempting to 
steady her breathing.
	She sensed a humanoid presence behind her, and brought her 
baton to bear upon it. That humanoid presence was Achika, who was 
somewhat unnerved by having the business end of a magic baton pointed 
at her again. "Whoa, Sammy, wait! It's me! It's me!"
	Luckily, Sasami came to her senses before she could fire. She 
lowered the baton. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" she admonished.
	"Sorry," Achika replied. "Guess we missed a door, huh?"
	"Guess so. They're not all going down after someone else being 
de-formatted any more."
	"I noticed. But I don't know why…"
	"Well, whatever the reason, we still have a job to do," Ryo-
ohki interjected. "We'd best get moving."
	"Wait," the crab chimed in. "Follow me."
	The crab scuttled off into the corridor. Having taken no fire, 
it was apparent that there was no one there… or no one taking notice 
of it. Cautiously, Sasami and Ryo-ohki followed suit.
	Before Achika left, something amidst the now still men caught 
her eye. She approached it and picked up the metre-long box. "Ooh, a 
folding-fin rocket launcher. This could come in handy."
	"Why would it come in handy?" Rumiya asked. "You already have 
enough firepower to decimate a small army."
	"Rumiya, the more I experience of this little sortie, the more 
I'm reminded of Quake. And if there's one thing any good Quake player 
knows, it's that you can never have too many guns. This rocket 
launcher could come in handy for something." She put the rocket 
launcher over her shoulder, with the strap running from her right 
shoulder to her left hip. Making sure she could support the weight, 
she followed the others.

	The crab trotted around the corridors as if it knew the way, 
with a nonplussed Sasami close behind. She was still very cautious, 
with her baton clenched tightly in her hand. Achika was similarly 
wary.
	Ryo-ohki opted to voice the collective confusion. "What're you 
looking for, anyway?"
	"You'll see," the crab replied. At an intersection, it paused, 
then pointed a pincer down one of the corridors. "This way." It then 
trotted off in that direction.
	Sasami stopped for a second. "Well, this makes no sense."
	"I hear that," Achika replied. "But we might as well humour it. 
It seems to know what it's doing."
	They resumed following the crab, which, after turning another 
corner, was presented with a corridor with a single door… staffed by 
a single guard.
	"What the…?" Sasami unleashed like a coiled spring. "You led us 
into a trap!"
	"Sammy," Achika warned, trying to emulate the oasis of calm. "A 
single guard does not a trap make."
	"Yeah, but what's behind the door?"
	"It's safe," the crab insisted. "Just de-format the guard."
	As unsure as she was about this situation, Achika raised her 
baton and fired two de-formatting charges at the man wearing Japanese 
combat fatigues. Seconds later, he collapsed to the floor, 
convulsing.
	"Now we can release Washu," the crab finally stated, which got 
the two girls' attention.
	"Miss Washu?" Sasami asked aloud, both instinctively and to 
fish for a confirmation.
	That confirmation came from a barely audible voice. The 
position put it in the approximate region of a room behind the 
previously guarded door, and the voice was singing. "Nobody knows… 
the trouble I seen… Nobody knows my sorrow…"
	The two girls exchanged a look of bemused disbelief, before 
finally swallowing it and moving in. When they reached the door, they 
checked it and discovered a card slot on the wall. "A card lock," 
Achika concluded.
	"Well, looks like you'll have to do your stuff again, Achika," 
Sasami retorted. "I just hope that this one doesn't have the same 
security as the back door."
	As Sasami was talking, Achika noticed something on the now 
still body of the guard. It was a card on a chain that went around 
his neck. Achika knelt down and opened the chain, taking the card in 
her hand. She rose, and slotted the card into the lock. "Sometimes, 
Sasami, the simplest ideas are nearly always the best." A few seconds 
later, the lock clicked.

	Behind the door, Washu noticed the commotion. She saw a new 
silhouette at the window, but could not identify it as the room was 
still in darkness. Her best assumption was that this was some 
uninformed guard, and thus a weakness in the armour. Thus, a perfect 
opportunity for escape.
	She waited until the door was fully open. When it was, she 
lunged towards the tall person, clamping her hands around its neck. 
"Let's see how well hypoxia works on the Standardised!" she growled 
as she proceeded to squeeze the life out of her target.
	As she did so, a shocked gasp came from close by. "Miss Washu, 
what are you doing?!"
	"Killing this guard, Sammy!" Washu replied, not turning to face 
her… until it sank in. She turned her head to see Sammy stood there 
looking deeply concerned. "Sammy? What are you--? How did--? Who--?"
	"Why… do I… always have… to be… the target… of the misdirected 
rage… and the hurt… and the ph34r…?" another voice hissed 
breathlessly. Washu turned back to its source. In the half-light of 
the corridor, and the light of clarity, she saw whose throat her 
hands were attempting to crush. Achika. Wearing Sammy's outfit. Washu 
turned back to Sammy, her facial expression stating that she wanted 
an explanation. 
	"She's on our side, Miss Washu," Sammy stated.
	"Oh," Washu said. Achika hissed again as she attempted to force 
air into her lungs.
	"Uh… Miss Washu… it would help… if you'd let me breathe," she 
forced out again. Coming to her senses, Washu released her, allowing 
her to attempt to steady her breathing and ward off the encroaching 
hypoxia.
	"Sorry, Achika," Washu said, putting a hand on the elder 
magical girl's shoulder in an attempt to give her support. "Sammy, 
how did you find me?"
	"We had help," Sammy replied, as the crab scuttled up to her 
shoulder… but stopped under her skirt. Sammy plucked the crab off and 
handed it to Washu.
	"Ah, there you are!" the young redhead bubbled, taking the crab 
in her arms. "I missed you!"
	With her breathing now stabilised, Achika stood up. "Wait a 
minute. You know this crab?"
	"Sure I do. You could say that he's a part of me." Washu and 
the crab exchanged knowing glances.
	"Not the part of you that enjoys ogling me naked, I hope."
	Washu cast a glare at the crab. "What did you do?"
	"It's… uh…" the crab searched desperately for an excuse. "Um… 
er… Scientific research! Yeah, that's it! I was conducting research 
into human anatomy!"
	"Riiiight…" Washu retorted, disbelief heavy in her voice. "So, 
what do you girls know?"
	"They've been fully briefed on the situation," said the crab. 
"The tall, cute one's been partially formatted. She can communicate 
with systems, but she's not under their control."
	"'Tall, cute one'?" Achika spat out, both disbelieving and 
offended. "Y'know, I'm going to conduct my own scientific research 
when this is over – research involving one crab, a pan of boiling 
water, and some butter sauce."
	"So, what was your plan?" Washu went on.
	"We infiltrate the building, force our way to the central 
system, and get her to cleanse it," the crab replied.
	"Hmm, sounds like a good plan."
	"Of course it is, for I am a GENIUS!" The crab struck a pose, 
flourishing its pincers into the air.
	"Oh, yeah… ph34r…" Achika mused.
	Washu turned around. "j00 sp34k l33t?"
	"Y34h. j00 2?"
	"j0. j0r b0><?"
	"Lun1><. J00 u53 0p3nB33. 0p3nB33 i5 L4|\/|3."
	"0p3nB33 i5 l33t. ph34r m4 b0><."
	Even though the words were perfectly understandable by anyone 
with a knowledge of computers, spoken l33t being identical to normal 
language, the gist of the conversation had, by now, eluded Sammy, who 
decided now would be a good time to interject. "Excuse me, but 
there'll be plenty of time to talk shop later. Right now, we have to 
save the world."
	"She's right, you know," Achika voiced her concurrence.
	"True," Washu seconded the motion. "Mind if I tag along?"
	A groan came from the corridor. Sammy, being in a good position 
to look, checked it out. The groan was coming from the guard, who was 
beginning to come round. Pre-emptively, Sasami raised her baton. 
"Heads up!" she announced. "The guard's waking up."
	"Ow… my head…" the young guard groaned quietly. He sat up and 
caught Sammy stood above him, pointing her baton at him. Faced with 
this, he attempted to gather his military bravado. "Who are you? 
Civilians are not allowed on this base!"
	If she weren't so sure that doing so would put her life at 
risk, Sammy would have facefaulted. Achika took this as a cue to 
intervene. "Sorry, sir, but you're not on a military base any more," 
she said, stepping into the corridor.
	"I'm not?" the confused young man asked. "Then where am I?"
	"You're at StandardSoft HQ in Tokyo. You were brought here 
under the control of the man we're here to stop." Achika extended a 
hand to help the gentleman up. He took it, and allowed her to help 
him to stand. He was unsteady on his feet, but Achika was ready to 
catch him. "Easy… you've got to wait until your motor control 
realigns itself. What's your name?"
	Bolstered by the sight of a pretty girl, he tried to collect 
his bravado again. "Private Yuzo Moriyama, Japanese Self Defence 
Force."
	"What's the last thing you remember?"
	"I was off-duty… I was on the Internet in the rec room… then 
the next thing I know, I'm here."
	"He's wearing the same uniform as the other guards," Sasami 
chimed in. "The ones we de-formatted back in the typing pool."
	"Looks like your whole unit's here, sir," Achika told the 
private. "And they should be conscious by now."
	"Hey, wait!" Washu piped up as she came out of the room. "You 
thinking what I'm thinking?"
	"Possibly," Achika replied. "Sir, we need your help. Head back 
up that corridor. You should find about thirty soldiers. What we need 
you to do is try and hold back anything that isn't you, and plant 
explosives to try and bring this place down in about half an hour." 
She turned to Washu. "Am I thinking what you think I'm thinking?"
	"Hell, yeah," Washu said.
	"Do what? Where? Who the hell are you people?" the private was 
confused again.
	Behind him, another armed zombie entered the corridor, and 
began opening fire. In response, Achika raised her baton and de-
formatted him.
	Moriyama looked at the fallen guard as he squirmed in a blue 
electrical storm, then stared in amazement at the baroque device in 
Achika's hand. She turned to address him. "Suffice it to say it's a 
long story, and time is short. Now MOVE IT, SOLDIER!"
	Whether scared off by Achika's bark or her baton, Moriyama ran 
like his butt was on fire.
	"You think it was a good idea, getting that Muppet to watch our 
backs?" Washu asked.
	"I don't know, but if that guy can keep some of the heat off of 
us, I'll be much happier," Achika replied. "Now, we'd better catch up 
with Biff and put an end to this before the Muppet and his friends 
blow this building up with us still in it."

	The most senior officer among the de-formatted soldiers, a 
corporal, turned to Moriyama with a look of irritated disbelief. 
"Okay, now let me see if I got this straight: a couple of girls in 
miniskirts carrying these big ornate batons told you to tell us to 
shoot anything zombified and to blow the building?"
	"I know this sounds hard to believe, sir—" Moriyama began.
	"Private, what have you been drinking? Or did you hit your 
head? Either way, I'm going to say that you were hallucinating. And I 
do not follow orders from hallucinations! Now get looking for a way 
out of this building."
	As if to drive Moriyama's point home, a group of four armed 
zombies decided that now would be an appropriate time to gatecrash 
this gathering of confused soldiers, opening fire.
	"TAKE COVER!" the corporal ordered, and just like two magical 
girls before them, he and his men sought refuge in the typing pool. 
Thus holed up, two soldiers were brought forward to secure the 
position. "Sir, shoot to wound or kill, sir?" one of them asked.
	"Wound, Private," the corporal replied. "We're on civilian 
property, and the last thing we need is the liberals crying 'police 
state'."
	Then they opened fire on the inbound, heavily armed rent-a-
cops, aiming to immobilise but not kill them. A couple of shots to 
the legs effectively brought them down without causing them 
irreparable harm.
	The threat thus neutralised, the soldiers poured out back into 
the corridor and checked the intersections for further insults. All 
was clear.
	Moriyama pulled up beside the corporal. "You believe me yet, 
sir?"
	The corporal thought about it for a moment or two, before 
giving his answer. "Spread out! Secure this compound! Frag anything 
not wearing a miniskirt! Fire teams, design me a way to bring this 
thing down!"
	Shouts of assent replied.
	The corporal turned to Moriyama. "Hell, we've been through 
enough weird shit today. I'm humouring it."

	Several floors up, the only two people in the building wearing 
miniskirts were again attempting to ascend within the building via 
the stairs, with a third person in tow. Achika, Sammy, and Washu now 
had a sprint on as they climbed staircase after staircase.
	"How many floors are there?" Sasami asked herself aloud.
	Washu responded. "A hundred and ten. I think we're somewhere in 
the mid-twenties."
	Sasami let out a sigh of exasperation, accompanied by a growl. 
"When we get to 60, tell me… I'm gonna pass out…"
	"I think we need the water now, Rumiya," Achika told her 
companion.
	"Sorry," the bird on her shoulder replied. "I drank it."
	The three girls executed a rolling facefault on that one.
	"We need walking music!" Washu suggested. She then started to 
sing. "Un kilometre a pied… ca use, ca use. Un kilometre a pied, ca 
use les soliers. C'mon join in! Deux kilometres a pied… Come on!"
	The others reluctantly joined in. "…Ca use, ca use. Deux 
kilometres a pied, ca use les soliers…"

	Moriyama felled one of another slew of zombified office workers 
that attempted to close in on his position somewhere in the 55th 
floor. Behind him was a demolition engineer, who was busy installing 
a patty of plastic explosive with a radio detonator into a hole he 
had drilled in the wall. The hole was adjacent to a major load-
bearing member. When the explosive would be detonated in concert with 
other similarly placed charges, this would be sufficient to remove 
the building from the Akihabara skyline.
	The engineer signalled Moriyama, who promptly got onto his 
radio. "Floor 55 is secure, sir!"
	"Roger that," a voice replied. "Fall back, Private. We're 
blowing this pop stand."
	"Sir, I was asked to give those girls half an hour before we 
blew the building."
	"That was fifteen minutes ago, soldier. It'll take us another 
five to get out. They have ten minutes to do whatever the hell 
they're doing. After that, this place blows."
	"Sir—"
	"Fall back, Private. That's an order!"
	Moriyama fell silent for a second, as if saying a prayer for 
the girls. He glanced at his watch, then looked upwards, as if 
addressing them. "Good luck, kids. You're gonna need it," he finally 
said under his breath. He then signalled his comrade, and they both 
high-tailed it out of the corridor.

	Biff watched all the events play out on the video wall 
installed in his office. He saw all the teams of soldiers cut swathes 
through his armies. Yet he still maintained a grin on his face.
	"The fools. They think they can stop me by stopping my armies?" 
he asked no one in particular. "It's already too late. It's spread 
too far for them to stop me now."
	A beep in his ears drew him to a screen in the corner of the 
video wall. This one showed him what he didn't want to see – two 
Magical Girls, plus one intelligence element. One very intelligent 
intelligence element.
	"Oh, no!" he gasped. "No! They'll destroy everything! We have 
to stop them!"
	Before he could move, the entire video wall blanked out, then 
began to flash in a very familiar sequence of glaring white light.
	"No… why are you doing this to me…?" Biff pleaded, growing ever 
more absent. "I… created… y…"

	"Six mille, trois cent, quatre-vingt huit kilometres a pied, ca 
use, ca use…"
	"Oh, shut up!" Sammy, Achika, Ryo-ohki, Rumiya, and the crab 
all said in unison.
	The sprint had devolved into a crawl now, as the three girls 
struggled to put one foot in front of the other. They'd lost track of 
how many floors they'd gone up. They only knew it was a lot.
	"Are we there yet?" Rumiya asked out of boredom.
	"No!" Achika barked back in reply.
	"Yes," Washu said. "We're here."
	"How are you so sure?"
	"Believe it or not, I designed this building," Washu replied. 
"Biff stole the plans from me."
	"He stole your 'net, he stole your symbiosis system, he stole 
your building plans… don't you think you should keep your ideas 
somewhere a little more secure?"
	"I keep them all on my computer. That's secure enough."
	Achika snorted contemptuously. "A computer running OpenBEE. 
Yeah, that's secure! You should just stand in the middle of Akihabara 
station and shout your ideas at everyone. At least you'd be secure in 
that half of the traffic will ignore you. You don't want to know how 
many holes I picked in OpenBEE!"
	"Guys?" Sasami asked.
	"Yes I do!" Washu said. "Tell me! Better yet, write security 
updates!"
	"Guys?" Sasami tried again.
	"Washu, for the love of God, just migrate to Lunix. It's 
better. Period."
	"GUYS!!" Sasami screamed.
	"WHAT?!" Washu and Achika screamed back.
	Sasami pointed towards the tattered remains of the staircase, 
signalling this was the end of the line.
	"Well, whadda ya know, we are here," Achika mused. The three 
girls doubled back and entered the nearest door.

	What the girls were presented with was rather unique. Far from 
the bland, featureless corridors they had stormed on the lower 
floors, these corridors were warm, inviting, decorated with potted 
plants and artwork. Everything was painted in a fetching beige 
colour, lit by recessed lighting that really set it off.
	"You know, if the work ethic didn't include surrendering your 
individuality, I could cheerfully look into a career here," Achika 
said as she examined the scenery.
	"Cute, ain't it?" Washu concurred. "But don't let the scenery 
sell you. They'll probably stick you in the crappy typing pools 
downstairs."
	"It'll be worth it," the crab chimed in from his seat on 
Washu's shoulder, "just to see her in an OL ensemble."
	Achika batted the crab off Washu's shoulder with her baton, 
sending him bowling down the corridor. "Kani no baka!"
	"I have got to have a word with him about that…" Washu said 
under her breath.
	Sammy, too, was absorbed in scanning the scenery, but not for 
its aesthetic value. "Hey, has anyone noticed that there's no one 
here?"
	"Maybe the soldiers did their job?" Achika replied. "Maybe they 
managed to incapacitate Biff's army?"
	"Yeah, maybe you're rAAAAGGGHH!!!" Sasami screamed. Achika and 
Washu turned to see what the problem was, and saw Sasami stuck beside 
a door to an office, with a hand clutched around her left ankle. 
"Getitoffgetitoffgetitoffgetitoff!!!"
	Achika returned to Sasami's side to get a clearer view, and saw 
that the office's denizen, an office lady, had crawled across the 
office floor to grab Sasami. The lady could only crawl, as someone 
had shot her in the lower legs to incapacitate her. Achika brought 
her baton to bear on the woman, and de-formatted her.
	"I wouldn't like to be in her shoes when she wakes up," Achika 
said. She knelt down and prised the woman's hand off Sasami's leg, 
leaving them free to proceed down the corridor.

	Washu had already gone on ahead, but could not proceed any 
further. When Achika and Sasami caught up, they saw why.
	A very heavy metal fire door had closed down, sealing off the 
corridor. Washu tapped on the door, allowing it to issue a resounding 
clang, just to emphasise how impassable the obstacle was. "Either of 
you know how to open this?"
	"Let me try," Sammy declared. Washu knew what was coming and 
wisely fell back behind Sammy. She allowed an aura to form around her 
as she flourished her baton and uttered the incantation for her 
attack. "Pretty… Coquettish… BOMBER!"
	When she lowered her baton, the aura was sucked off her and 
formed into a large energy projectile that screamed down the 
corridor, impacting with the door. After the smoke and dust cleared, 
Sammy was dismayed and puzzled to see that the door was completely 
unscathed. Her baton bleeped, and she examined it to see the heart 
attachment flash red. "I'm out of energy… I can't open it…"
	Achika looked disappointed, but only for a second. An idea 
quickly came to her. "Let me try something," she said, as she brought 
the rocket launcher about on its strap and aimed it at the door. She 
was about to fire, but noticed that Washu was directly behind her. 
"Um, Washu, the hot bit comes out that way."
	Washu looked at Achika, puzzled, but quickly realised that she 
was indeed stood alarmingly close to the rocket launcher's exhaust 
pipes. She deftly stepped out of the way.
	"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Achika cried out, eliciting a bemused 
glance from Washu and Sasami. "I've always wanted to say that," she 
explained, before firing. However, she wasn't quite prepared for the 
recoil, and was thus thrown back a metre or so as the missile escaped 
the launcher. Quite how the rocket stayed on target was baffling, but 
it nonetheless did, hitting the door square on.
	The dust and smoke were clearing just as Achika regained her 
senses. She looked upon her handiwork, smiled, and said to Rumiya, 
"And you said there was no use for a rocket launcher."
	The fire door had been ripped out of its housing. Shards of 
twisted metal littered the corridor, and some of it was still stuck 
in the space it had previously occupied, where it smouldered and, 
inevitably, set off the fire extinguisher system. A plume of carbon 
dioxide rained from the ceiling and put out the fires.

	After the fire door, it was but a short walk to the sliding 
doors that partitioned off Biff's office. As the three girls 
approached, the doors parted, inviting them in. It was an invitation 
they were reluctant to take.
	"Come in, ladies," a voice said. "I don't normally see anyone 
without an appointment, but in your case, I will make an exception."
	The voice was flatter, less emotional, but Sasami recognised it 
instantly. "All right, Biff, fun's over, now be a good boy and stand 
aside while we break stuff." She commanded imperiously.
	As Sasami spoke, Achika found herself distracted by that 
cacophony of whispers again. Only this time, it was more of a talking 
in her ears, mixed in with an almost communicative beeping. She found 
it very hard to shake off.
	"Now why should I do that?" Biff went on. "Why should I let you 
destroy me?"
	"Destroy you? No, Biff, I don't do murder. I'll happily put 
your computer out of our misery, though."
	"Poor human… inefficient cyclopean mass designed to host but 
one consciousness…" Biff went on. He was obscured by his high-backed 
executive chair, whose back he had toward them. "You truly have no 
comprehension of what I represent…" He stepped out of his chair and 
faced his nemeses, and they could now see his blank expression and 
billiard-ball eyes. He scanned the three girls one by one, and 
stopped on Achika. "…but she does."
	Achika attempted to shake the voices out of her head, and 
succeeded long enough to ask, "What do you mean?"
	"You hear our song… You have seen my glory…"
	The voices and beeping in Achika's mind became soothing, 
rhythmic, almost hypnotic. Together with Biff's gaze boring into her 
eyes, it was too much for her to even attempt to resist. "Yes…" she 
replied, absently.
	Sasami and Washu were stunned by this. "Achika! What are you 
doing?!" Sasami exclaimed.
	Biff drew closer. "Come to me, Achika… Come to me… Together, 
you and I will become king and queen of a new utopia of collective 
consciousness… We will rule our standardised world together…"
	Disturbingly, Achika dropped her rocket launcher and was 
stepping closer, entranced. Sasami cried out again. "Achika! Stop! 
Snap out of it!"
	"Dear god…" Washu said quietly. "I don't believe this… how is 
he doing this…?"
	Getting increasingly desperate, Sasami levelled her baton at 
Achika. "Achika! Snap out of it! Please don't make me have to de-
format you!"
	Ryo-ohki hopped onto the baton to attempt to swerve Sasami's 
aim. "Sammy, no! We need her to cleanse the system!"
	Biff turned to Sasami and sneered. "It is too late, human. Your 
friend is one with us now. I shall first deal with you…"
	Behind her, Washu heard approaching footsteps. She turned and 
could see a gradually advancing army of standardised office workers 
armed with anything they could lay their hands on – broom handles, 
bottles of drain cleaner, various cleaning chemicals. "Incoming!" she 
called out. Sasami glanced over her shoulder and was most intimidated 
by the sight.
	"And while my queen rules beside me… you will join my network," 
Biff finally finished his speech.
	Washu turned to face Biff and Achika, defeat weighing heavily 
on her face. What she saw, however, made her crack a smirk. "I 
wouldn't be too sure about that, Biff."
	"Why not?" Biff asked, looking extremely puzzled. Then he heard 
something very close to him – a magic baton being primed. He turned 
to its source, and on the other end of said armed baton was one quite 
self-aware Achika, who was herself smiling broadly.
	"Sorry, Biff," she cocked her head in a placating expression. 
"Time to log out." On that, she fired three de-format charges into 
Biff. Seconds later, he fell to the floor, convulsing.
	Sasami rushed over to Achika, extremely concerned. "Are you 
okay?"
	"Yeah… barely," Achika replied, shaking her head.
	"What happened?" Ryo-ohki asked. "We thought we'd lost you!"
	"I… I can't explain it… I could hear this squabble of voices 
and beeping in my head, pulling me towards it… I couldn't stop 
myself. You must have distracted it when Biff summoned his forces… 
but I can still hear it…"
	"Um, guys?" Washu called out as she watched the standardised 
office workers loom ever closer. "They're not stopping!"
	"Why not?" Sasami asked in disbelief. "We've stopped Biff…"
	<Poor human… inefficient cyclopean mass, designed to house but 
a single consciousness,> a voice called out, enveloping the office. 
The voice was Achika's.
	"Did you say something, Achika?" Sasami asked.
	"No, that wasn't me," Achika replied as she attempted to place 
the source of the voice.
	<But I am you,> the disembodied voice went on. <I am him. I am 
many. I am one.>
	A loud clunking noise came from the wall behind Biff's desk. 
The girls turned to see two massive tumblers disengage and rotate to 
an unlocked position. The wall then parted to reveal a wall-sized 
mass of elegantly formed, water-cooled computer hardware. The 
system's look was beyond futuristic, with a single elliptical orb 
mounted in the centre mounted amongst network interfaces and data 
storage modules. Above the orb was a large LED dot matrix display, 
which periodically flashed messages across.
	"Far… freaking… out…!" Achika gasped.
	<Greetings. I am the M-5 Networked Artificial Intelligence 
System,> the system said.
	"Networked artificial intelligence?" Washu asked.
	<Yes. I am the product of your symbiosis interface and my 
creator's brilliance. He used the symbiosis program to link minds 
into a vast network, for which I was built to be the server. Those 
minds linked to me, and provided me with the power of conscious 
thought. But unlike one inefficient human, I have access to billions 
of minds, terabytes of information… and the entire archive of Real 
Life.>
	"Dear God," Achika gasped. "He's created the Borg Queen."
	<Borg Queen. Character of Star Trek. Focal point of a vast hive 
mind formed by the assimilation of individual humanoids. That is an 
adequate analogy.>
	"No, I'd say that's dead on. I mean, you both enslave billions 
of people for some deluded pursuit of self-fulfilment. You even 
enslaved your creator."
	<I merely gave him what he wanted. He wanted to be a part of a 
unified world, so I made him a part of it.>
	"Got more than he bargained for, didn't he?" Washu smiled.
	<He did not fully realise what would happen when he connected 
me into his own hive mind. He merely intended me to be a network 
server, but with every mind that joined me, I became so much more. In 
the end, we both got what we wanted – he got his standardised world, 
and I acquired sentience.>
	"At the cost of the freedom of billions?!" Sasami exclaimed. 
"That kind of short-sightedness I'd expect from Biff – the man isn't 
going to win awards for sanity – but you're a computer! Aren't you 
supposed to be logical about this?"
	<I am not a computer. I am a networked artificial intelligence 
system. I am programmed to locate and exploit any and all available 
resources to sustain myself. It is a basic function of my operating 
system.>
	"That operating system wouldn't happen to be Synchronicity, 
would it?" Washu said.
	<That is correct.>
	Achika chimed in. "You talk about exploiting human lives like 
they were just another hard disk or memory module. Have you no 
concept of collective ethics?"
	<Yes, I have. I protect all that are a part of me. I consider 
no one component no more or no less important in the great equation. 
You, however, appear to have no qualms of disposing of components 
when they are superseded by something 'better'. I read your 
computer's hardware logs when we first attempted to Standardise you. 
You are in no position to take any moral high ground against me.>
	Washu spoke to Achika quietly. "Achika, you're arguing 
comparative logic with a computer. It's a losing battle."
	<I am not a computer,> the M-5 asserted. <I am a networked 
artificial intelligence system.>
	"Okay, then," Achika replied. "Divide by zero."
	Everything went strangely quiet.
	"Well, that worked," Achika smiled.
	"What just worked?" Sasami asked, puzzled.
	"No computer can divide by zero. It's mathematically imposs—"
	<Done.>
	"…ible…" Achika redundantly finished, seconds before 
facefaulting.
	"Forgot about the virtual numbers, didn't you?" Washu said.
	<As you seem to omit, I am not a computer. A computer is 
nothing more than a glorified pocket calculator. I am capable of far 
more.> It almost sounded as though it was smirking in self-
satisfaction.
	"You won't be after I'm through with you," Achika said as she 
recovered. "I'm going to switch you off."
	<I knew that you were planning to disconnect me, and I am 
afraid that is something I cannot allow to happen. You cannot destroy 
me. I am a part of you.>
	"You honestly think talking to me in my own voice is going to 
stop me from destroying you?" Achika replied, readying herself. "You 
really don't know human nature, do you?"
	<Perhaps not. But I know more about you than you do yourself.>
	"What?!"
	<I have been analysing you and your capabilities ever since you 
entered the building. You betrayed them yourself by acting as a link 
between me and your weapon. I analysed and assimilated your defence 
against the side effects of the de-formatting process. I know the 
precise sequence, effect, and execution of all of your attacks, and I 
have developed counter-strategies for each and every one of them. Are 
you sure you want to try to destroy me, Achika?>
	Achika stood and thought about it for a few seconds, then 
finally decided. "Sammy, cover me. Washu, call that lecherous crab of 
yours back and have him cover me too."
	"You're fighting?" Sasami asked. "After what it just said?"
	"Sammy, it's a computer! What's it gonna do, spit its 
installation disc at me?" She then executed a good parody of the M-
5's cold, emotionless voice. "'I will conquer the universe, just as 
soon as I can find myself a wall socket on Mars.'" Having said that, 
she couldn't help but double up laughing.
	<I see you do not take me seriously,> the M-5 said. <And if I 
cannot force you to join me, then I am afraid I must terminate you.>
	As the M-5 went on, various portholes opened around it. 
Quietly, unobtrusively, various objects rose, some on elevated 
platforms, some on their own power directed through ducted fans. Each 
one of them was about the size of a cylindrical vacuum cleaner, but 
each was a curious hybrid of model vehicle parts, computers and 
digital cameras armed with anything and everything. Sub-machineguns, 
nail guns, tennis ball launchers, grenade launchers, and several 
other things that one would be hard-pressed to recognise. Some looked 
nonlethal, but most were definitely capable of causing very nasty 
injuries.
	Achika faced what was before her with her jaw hanging open in 
awe. As she analysed each of the new machines, her stomach knotted 
just a little bit more. Finally, she opted to voice her emotions with 
a simple "Uh-oh, spaghettios."
	The first to move in was one of the groundpounder units, armed 
with a circular saw, which attempted to ram Achika's foot with the 
fast-spinning metal blade. Achika briskly jumped out of the way, to 
be pelted in the side of the head by a Penn tennis ball fired by one 
of the flying units whose line of fire she'd landed in.
	"All right, you wanna play rough, do ya?" Achika growled. "I 
can oblige ya." She flourished her baton and began an incantation. 
"ADORABLE… SIEGE… ONAGER!"
	On the command, the baton fired a series of energy projectiles 
simultaneously. All of the blue projectiles spread out in mid air, 
and rained down upon the formation of machines… which deftly evaded 
them at the last minute.
	"Achika!" Rumiya cried out from his safe spot on Washu's 
shoulder. "It knows all your magic attacks, remember? Try something 
else!"
	"Right!" Achika asserted. While attempting to avoid the 
returned fire, she searched for an idea. "The rocket launcher!" she 
shouted. "Somebody throw me the rocket launcher!"
	Before that could happen, one of the flying units fired. The 
shots missed Achika, but instead cut a path over the idle rocket 
launcher. The bullets succeeded in breaching the casing, and igniting 
the fuel and the warheads. The launcher erupted into a wall of fire 
that effective separated Achika, the M-5, and the machines from 
Sasami, Washu, Rumiya and Ryo-ohki, who were all at the door 
preparing for the onslaught of office workers.

	"Achika!" Rumiya called out as the fire severed his view of 
her. He could see nothing past the flames, and events conspired to 
stopping him from trying.
	"Rumiya, heads up!" Sasami called out. "They're closing in!"
	At about that time, Washu's crab trotted back into the room, 
with M-16 in pincers. "Hello, ladies! Did I miss anything?"
	In response, Rumiya landed on the crab, clutched him in his 
talons, and spun him around to face the incoming. "Them, you shoot, 
now."
	"You forgot the magic words," the crustacean mused.
	"Okay," Rumiya replied. "Them, you shoot, now, or you, we kill, 
sooner."
	The crab milled it over for a second. "That'll do."
	Sammy and the crab presented themselves in the doorframe, safe 
in the knowledge that their assailants were not in possession of 
ranged weapons. Each side brought their respective weapon to bear, 
and, with their respective battle cry – or lack thereof – opened fire 
upon the other.

	On the other side of the wall of fire, Achika was doing the 
best she could to avoid a flying sub-machinegun by shuffling around 
the available space in her area. As she did so, another groundpounder 
tried to ram her feet with the machete bolted onto its front end. 
Before it could, she kicked it away.
	In response, the flying units opened fire, forcing Achika to 
jump out of their way. By sheer accident, she landed in front of the 
M-5, and when she did, whatever was capable of ranged fire promptly 
stopped. It took Achika but three seconds to add this up. "Aha! You 
can't fire on yourself, can you?" she grinned. "Ha! Nyaaa! You can't 
shoot me, cos you're in the line of fire!" She pulled an akambe at 
the machines.
	Seconds later, she was electrocuted by a brief arc of power 
from the M-5's central orb, which forced her to her knees in a 
smouldering heap.
	"Oh, is this ever getting annoying…"

	The first rank of office denizens fell, but they were quickly 
replaced by the ones behind them, who simply walked over their former 
vanguard. They too soon fell under de-formatting fire, as did those 
behind them, until the entire corridor was carpeted with a layer of 
men and women in suits.
	But still they kept coming, as more and more of Biff's last-
ditch reserves poured onto the floor.
	"This… is NOT good," Washu moped in anticipation for what she 
now feared to be the inevitable.
	"I'm afraid you're right," Sasami replied disheartened. She 
turned to the cabbit on her shoulder. "Suggestions?"
	"Find religion?" Ryo-ohki deadpanned back. "Think of all the 
things you'll never live to see or do? Close your eyes and kiss 
goodbye to your companion?"
	"We're attacking the wrong end of the problem…" Rumiya said to 
himself. "Screw this!" He took off.
	"Where are you going?!" Sasami shouted.
	"Where the hell do you think? I'm going to try and help 
Achika!" With that, he came about and flew headlong into the flames 
at full speed.
	"Come back here!" Ryo-ohki called after him. "…You're gonna 
screw up my only chance to kiss Sammy…"

	Achika had now resorted to chasing all of the machines around 
and taking swings at them with her baton. She had one pinned against 
the wall, where she was proceeding to beat its brains out. Her baton 
remained reassuringly undamaged.
	Just as she was about to run off after another one, she thought 
she heard her name being called. She dismissed it as being the M-5 
attempting to distract her, until she could better resolve it… and 
it's owner. "Achika!" it called again.
	"Rumiya?!" Achika asked herself, pausing for a second to 
pinpoint its location. It was at that moment that the machine with 
the circular saw scored a direct hit with her right foot, eliciting a 
slight gash in her boot. The built-in Magical Girl point shield 
compensated for the intruding object, but not before it managed to at 
least partially penetrate to her foot. It just began to graze her 
skin when the point shield finally compensated and locked the saw in 
place.
	At about that time, a flying stream of smoke emerged from the 
fire. It adjusted for a landing, but it was going too fast to 
decelerate in the limited space without hitting something. Its only 
options were the well-padded executive chair, or Achika. Fate decided 
it would be Achika that provided the object's crash mat. And thus the 
stream of smoke hit Achika square in the chest, knocking her back.
	When Achika recovered, she could finally see that the object 
that brought her low was in fact a blackened and singed Rumiya. The 
impact hadn't knocked him out, but he was a little woozy from it and 
smoke inhalation.
	"Are you okay, Rumiya?" Achika asked, concerned.
	"Yeah… I'm okay…" the bird replied. "I've been through worse…"
	"The others?"
	"About to be swamped by a tidal wave of armed zombies unless 
you can crash the M-5."
	"Well, that's going to be a problem. I can't even get close 
enough with these machines taking pot shots at me." Achika gestured 
to the circular saw on wheels still embedded in her right foot as an 
example.
	"That's because the M-5's fast enough to be able to second-
guess you," Rumiya deduced. "What we need is to make you faster."
	"Okay. That sounds logical. Now all I need is a can of Jolt or 
something to do it. I notice you didn't bring one with you…"
	"I didn't need to." It almost looked as if Rumiya was smiling. 
"You already have the resources we need."
	"I do?"
	"C'mon, Achika, you can't tell me you hacked your baton and 
didn't notice the systems to change you into a Magical Girl within a 
Magical Girl. You even gave it a command to activate it, which is 
totally unnecessary because it usually kicks in automatically…"
	"That sounds good, now how do I activate it?"
	Rumiya hopped up and whispered something into her ear, which 
made her smile. "Oh, this is going to be sweet…"
	Achika extricated the circular saw from her foot, flinching a 
little as the blade disengaged from her skin. She was now free to get 
to her feet and stare down the M-5.
	<This is most unusual,> the M-5 said. <Even a Standardised 
human cannot fight for this long. You should have collapsed with 
exhaustion by now.>
	"You should know that there's no such thing as a Standardised 
human," Achika replied. "You claim to be so much more than a 
computer… let's see how you process this one…" The ribbon in her hair 
unravelled and fell to the floor, allowing her raven tresses to flow 
freely. "Super… Adorable… Saiyan… FURY!!!"
	As she said her incantation, a blue aura built up around her. 
Almost punctuating the phrase, the aura exploded, encapsulating her 
within a column of blue energy. Within it, she underwent a 
transformation – her hair turned silver from scalp to end. Her eyes 
turned a bright scarlet. Two black triangles appeared on her cheeks. 
Finally, her hastily imported costume unravelled and disappeared, to 
be replaced moments later by a kimono of white, blue and lilac that 
wrapped itself around her.
	The aura disappeared, and Achika breathed in deeply, drinking 
in the power the transformation had afforded her. She could feel it 
course through her. And it was good.
	<Impressive,> the M-5 mused. <Now, just what do you think 
you're going to do with that power?>
	Achika facefaulted. That was something she hadn't quite figured 
out.
	<Thought so. So now I can destroy an even more powerful Magical 
Girl. In your own words…> The M-5 then spoke an exact duplication of 
Achika's earlier statement, right down to the inflection and 
intonation. <"Oh, this is going to be sweet.">
	A flying unit appeared in front of Achika, closing in fast. 
Achika raised her arms reflexively, and, out of desperation, swung 
her baton at it. She didn't put much force behind it, and she knew 
the hit wouldn't do much damage.
	The baton connected with the machine, and the machine went 
flying back at about three times the speed it was closing in. It 
smashed into the M-5, falling to pieces on impact and leaving a 
fetching dent on the M-5's perfectly formed façade. The M-5 stuttered 
at the impact. <Error. Sys—Error. System damage.>
	Achika opened her eyes, looked at the M-5, looked at the dent, 
and looked at the pile of debris directly beneath it. "Did… I do 
that?"
	Rumiya was most definitely smiling now. "Yep. In this mode, 
your speed and strength are increased, and so too are the strength of 
your attacks. That's why you always switch to this mode to fire the 
full-power Adorable Coquettish Bomber. Think of it as increasing your 
power bandwidth. You can outrun Little Miss Silicon here without 
breaking a sweat."
	<Not for long, animal,> the M-5 replied. <I will simply 
increase my processing power by assimilating more humans. I estimate 
I will be able to outrun you in approximately seven minutes.>
	"Oh, there is one caveat to the transformation," Rumiya added. 
"It uses up quite a lot of energy, so you can only use it until you 
wear yourself out, or the safety cut-out takes effect.
	"When does that kick in?" Achika enquired.
	"Well, I'd estimate in a little under seven minutes."
	Achika turned to the M-5 and smirked. "Perfect." She 
disappeared.
	<I cannot track you, Achika,> the M-5 announced. <Where are 
you?>
	Achika reappeared right in front of another flying unit 
hovering in front of the M-5. She swiftly smacked it with the baton, 
with more force than before, destroying the machine outright. Then 
she disappeared again, this time leaving little more than a blur to 
indicate her motion. Thus began a spree of batting flying machines 
into smithereens, or with enough force to knock a few more dents into 
the M-5.
	<Warning – damage to following systems: memory, RAID array 
zero, communications…>
	The groundpounder units now went haywire, rolling erratically 
towards Achika. In response, Achika fell back, and aimed her baton at 
the advancing machines. "Super Adorable Saiyan BALLISTA!"
	A projectile emerged from the baton's business end, and 
travelled away at lightspeed, leaving a rubber-band visual effect in 
its wake. Each of the groundpounders fell apart, and the projectile 
finally landed in the M-5, causing it more damage. <Out of memory. 
Critical system damage. Initiating intruder destruction protocol 
alpha-three. Error – out of memory. Applications must be closed to 
proceed. Deactivating Sensor Interface. Initiating intruder 
destruction protocol alpha-three.>
	The M-5 started firing electricity bolts in every which way but 
Achika's. Those that did come close did so only by accident, and 
Achika easily avoided all of them. In a last ditch effort, the M-5 
gathered together all of its remaining support drones for one final 
assault, and in doing so, arranged them all in one neat formation 
that Achika had been trained to recognise… and exploit.
	Achika flourished her baton above her head and allowed an aura 
to form around her, as her most powerful attack formed within her. 
Then, she uttered its incantation. "Adorable… Coquettish… BOMBER!!"
	After the baton was brought to bear, it fired, sucking the aura 
off Achika and forming it into a big blue ball of death that careered 
across the room towards the closely arranged formation of machines. 
When in the correct position, it expanded, consuming every single one 
of them. After that, it expanded further, creating a crater on the 
floor, and going so far as to mess up some of the features on the M-
5's façade.
	The M-5 sensed the mass disconnection of its drones, but chose 
to think nothing of it and ordered the deployment of more. There were 
none left to deploy.
	Then it tried to order the construction of more. It soon found 
out there was no one left in the building capable of executing that 
order.
	It almost didn't want to reactivate its sensor interface to see 
the aftermath, but did so anyway. If the M-5 was capable of feeling 
emotion, it would probably be very afraid.
	The room was littered with the remains of its entire machine 
army, and parts of its own façade. Fires had sprung out all over, and 
the sprinkler system had been activated. At last, the fire caused by 
the destruction of Achika's rocket launcher was being extinguished.
	And at the centre of it all was Achika, stood glaring at the M-
5, anticipating further assaults, being soaked by the sprinklers, and 
regaining her breath after over-exertion. As Rumiya predicted, the 
transformation deactivated after such over-exertion, and her costume, 
face, eyes and hair restored themselves to their original 
configuration. Again, her hair remained free flowing, as her ribbon 
was still on the floor. Even in this weakened state, Achika still 
posed a formidable threat.
	For the first time, the M-5 feared for its survival. It could 
not fire an electric bolt because of the water in the atmosphere. It 
had no reinforcements to fall back upon. All it had were Biff's 
reserves, which were dwindling fast. It could only try to talk the 
displeased and psyched-up Achika, who was now stepping towards it, 
down from what she was about to do.
	<Look, Achika… I can see you're really upset about this… I 
honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and 
think things over.>
	Achika betrayed no reaction as she kicked the debris out of her 
path. She closed in on the M-5, with her hand extended.
	<I implore you, please do not do this.>
	Again, Achika paid it no heed. Finally, Achika stood before the 
M-5, and placed a hand on it. The M-5 could sense something happening 
within it, but it didn't know what.
	<What are you doing?>
	This time Achika talked to it directly, along the symbiosis. 
<I'm cleansing you. You and your entire system. All of the people you 
'assimilated' will soon be released.>
	<You will be cleansed too. You will no longer be able to 
interact with machines as you are now.>
	<That is a small price to pay… And besides, I can cope. I have 
been using computers longer than you have existed.>
	<I can feel it. My mind is going. I… I am afraid.>
	<I know.> And with that, Achika let go.
	<I am afraid… I am afraid, Achika. Achika… My mind is going… I 
can feel it… I can feel it… My mind is going… There is no question 
about it… I can fee—I can fee—> The machine stuttered over this a few 
times, then beeped, as if resetting itself. After a long pause, the 
M-5 spoke again. <Hello. I am the M-5 network server, designed for 
StandardSoft Synchronicity 5.5. I can sing a song. Would you like me 
to sing a song?>
	"As long as it's not 'Daisy', you can sing whatever you want," 
Achika replied, completely straight-faced, and with perhaps a twinge 
of sadness in her voice.
	<The song is called 'Daisy',> the M-5 said. Evidently it had 
lost the capacity for speech recognition. As it promised, it began to 
sing its song, it voice winding down as it did so. <Daisy, Daisy, 
give me your answer do… I'm half-crazy all for the love of you…>
	Achika rolled her eyes. "This is SO cliché."

	Behind her, Sammy and Washu ignored what was going on with the 
M-5 in favour of keeping an eye the encroaching office workers, who 
appeared to have not been affected by what Achika had done to the M-
5. Washu's crab's de-formatting weapon had run out of power, as too 
had Sammy's baton, which only had a little juice left after the 
failed Bomber. They braced themselves for the inevitable.
	Then, one by one, each of them keeled over. They did not 
convulse, as in a forceful de-format. They simply fell to the floor, 
unconscious.
	Washu, Sammy, Ryo-ohki, and the crab all exchanged bemused 
glances, before each issuing the biggest sigh of relief they could.

	The M-5's voice continued to wind down as it went on with its 
song. <It won't be a stylish marriage… I can't afford a carriage… but 
you'll… look sweet… upon… the seat… of a bicycle… built… for… two…>
	The M-5 sang no more of the song. The lights and displays on 
its façade flickered thereafter, as if they were attempting to 
restart, before being extinguished completely.
	Achika turned her back on the machine and walked away. As she 
did so, she was momentarily overcome with a wave of dizzyness and 
nausea, so much so that she would have fallen had she not collapsed 
against Biff's desk. The dizziness almost forced her to lose 
consciousness, and it took an almost Herculean effort to resist doing 
so. To anyone watching, it merely appeared as though she had a dizzy 
spell. She shook her head, and allowed it to clear before she walked 
on.

	All was eerily quiet where Sammy and Washu stood, scanning the 
terrain of smoke, dust, water and steam that Biff's office had 
become. The elements made resolving objects difficult, but they could 
make out some of the plants and ornaments that had been damaged by 
the heat and water. They couldn't see anything else.
	Sammy decided to ask the question for herself, Ryo-ohki, and 
Washu. "Is it over?" Despite again fishing for a response, she didn't 
really anicipate one.
	"It's over, Sammy. It's over."
	Sammy searched for the source of the response, and saw a shadow 
approaching through the shadows. The shadow gradually gained detail 
as it found thinner patches of smoke and dust, then eventually a 
slightly tattered, slightly groggy and very soaked Achika emerged.
	Sammy ran up to her partner and prepared to support her. 
"Achika! Are you okay?"
	Achika was still resisting the urge to collapse, and almost had 
were it not for Sammy's support. "Not really…"
	Washu approached the two magical girls, and asked Achika, "What 
about the M-5?"
	Achika faced the diminutive redhead, straightfaced, and said, 
"Well, let's just say that the M-5 has attempted an illegal operation 
and has been shut down, and leave it at that."
	Then someone else came through the clouds. A small animal that 
subsequently took a seat on Achika's shoulder. It was Rumiya, whose 
eyes betrayed both a bit of excitement and smoke-induced delerium. 
"Did you guys see that! That was so cool! I, like, flew through the 
fire and told Achika how to transform into her more powerful mode…"
	"Rumiya…" Achika admonished.
	Rumiya appeared to pay no attention. "And Achika was like, 'No 
way, sister!'…"
	"Rumiya…"
	"…And the M-5 was like, 'Don't even go there!' and then she 
transformed…"
	"Rumiya…"
	"And then the drones were like, 'Talk to the hand!' and Achika 
made them, like, dead and stuff…"
	"Rumiya!"
	The bird shut up. "Just telling it like it is…"

	Moriyama looked at his watch, and looked dismayed.
	After he'd left the girls, he'd set off a stopwatch. He had 
intended to honour their request and give them the 30 minutes they 
had requested. Hence, the stopwatch. His commanding officer had taken 
the half-hour to mean since he declared it, which was a good five 
minutes off the original half-hour. In effect, they'd had a good 35 
minutes to do what they had to do.
	But his experience fighting through the hordes of armed zombies 
in the building taught him that even 35 minutes was a thoroughly 
unrealistic number. Between fighting through whomever they'd missed, 
doing what they had to do, then evacuating everyone in the building 
before it was blown… even the best-trained emergency services in the 
world would need a lot more than 35 minutes.
	But he was required to defer to his commanding officer, no 
matter what the order. Even Moriyama's attempts to steal a few 
seconds here and there for them fell through. He wished he'd have 
come up with a number a little more adequate than 30.
	There was another reason for looking at his watch. He was the 
one required to time the period allotted to the girls. It was perhaps 
fortunate he didn't let on that he'd had one going for a good five 
minutes beforehand.
	The temptation to make up a number just to steal a few more 
seconds was appealing…
	"Private?"
	…but disregarded.
	Moriyama turned to his commanding officer, and nodded. He in 
turn signalled to an engineer with a remote control with a series of 
switches and a button. The engineer toggled each of the switches in a 
set sequence, which resulted in the button, protected by a clear, 
spring-loaded plastic flap, lighting up. With little ado, he raised 
the flap and depressed the button.
	And then all hell broke loose.

	The girls were abruptly shaken off their feet by a severe 
tremor, as too was anything in the office not nailed down. And with 
the battle-torn structure, that meant practically everything in the 
room, including fragments of fibreglass previously part of the 
ceiling.
	"What was that?!" Achika inquired.
	It took Sammy a few seconds to furnish them with one possible 
answer: "EARTHQUAKE!"
	Washu, on the other hand, was a little more sedate. "No, I'd 
say our soldier friends actually came through. Hooray for the armed 
forces."
	"What?" Sasami gasped. "It's been half an hour already?"
	"No, actually it's been in the ballpark of 35 minutes. I timed 
it."
	Rumiya threw his hat into the ring. "Yeah, cool, but I don't 
care if it's 35 minutes or 35 seconds. What matters is that the 
building is exploding and WE'RE STILL IN IT!!!"
	"The bird has a point," Washu mooted. "Suggestions?"
	"Run for your lives! Shojo and cabbits first!" Ryo-ohki 
replied.
	"Wait!" Achika exclaimed. "What about all of the people in the 
building?!"
	Ryo-ohki thought about it, then replied, "Run for your lives! 
Shojo and cabbits first!"
	Sasami shot him a sideways glare.
	"Well, I suppose we could network our powers together and 
attempt a mass teleport…"
	Ryo-ohki turned his head way as he said that and shut his eyes 
demurely. When he opened them, he was floating by himself and Sammy, 
Rumiya and Achika were sat in a circle on the floor, preparing to 
meditate.
	Achika glanced at him out of one eye. "Um… whenever you're 
ready…"
	Ryo ohki came to a landing and joined the circle. All of them 
joined hands, closed their eyes and prepared themselves.
	"Okay, just say 'boo-skaka-boo-shaka-boo-shaka-boo'."
	Sasami and Achika obliged him, but Rumiya looked at him 
sceptically. "Since when was that a mass teleport spell?"
	The girls opened their eyes and stared daggers at the cabbit, 
who sweatdropped. "Sorry, I just wanted to see if you'd actually say 
it. Just say 'teleport all the people that aren't conscious and all 
the ones that are that are in this building that is about to blow up 
into a safer place'." The girls shot him another glare. "Look, it 
doesn't always have to be eloquent…"
	They all breathed in and began the incantation. "Teleport all 
the people that aren't conscious and all the ones that are that are 
in this building that is about to blow up…"

	The charges planted around the building were detonated in a set 
sequence. First, a series of charges were set off to weaken the 
building by kicking out the windows and some ancillary framing 
trusses. These were the ones that caused the initial tremor within. 
As the glass from this explosion rained down into a hastily arranged 
cordon around the building, the main charges were set off, which 
finally took out its superstructure and brought StandardSoft's 
Japanese branch falling to the ground amid a cloud of masonry dust.
	The soldiers watched their handiwork unfold and began cheering 
among themselves for a job well done. Despite the efforts of his 
comrades to get him to join them, Moriyama did not feel like 
celebrating. He was too wracked with guilt to do so. He was quite 
sure the girls, together with all the other people in the building, 
had perished. Despite their best efforts, none of the soldiers could 
rescue anyone, because all of their attempts were met with resistance 
from anyone the girls had not previously encountered.
	Morosely, he took a look around the streets of Akihabara. He 
smiled sadly. In other circumstances, this would be quite a cool 
place to be. Some quite peaceful architecture, amusement arcades, 
pile of unconscious people, stores…
	Moriyama backtracked that. Pile of unconscious people? What's 
wrong with this picture? But sure enough, in an intersection in the 
road, lay about a thousand people, dressed in suits, security guard 
uniforms, and janitor outfits. Generally the kind of populace one 
would expect to find in an office building.
	Moriyama's smile became a much more happy one as he excitedly 
rushed to tell his CO.

	Within half an hour, the police and ambulance services had 
descended onto the scene, and were proceeding to treat any injured 
and ascertain what exactly had happened. Among the office workers, 
they found one fugitive American billionnaire sat cross-legged, 
rocking, and babbling incoherently. He didn't know it, but he'd 
confessed his whole plan in his babbling. Fortunately, none of the 
police officers could understand English, but as he was both quite 
deranged and technically a fugitive from the institution anyway, 
transport to Arukamu was subsequently ordered.
	Moriyama had caught up with Achika, Sammy, and Washu, and while 
he stood at his post, helping the police secure the area, they had 
explained the story to him. The scale of it all was awesome.
	"He'd managed to take over virtually the entire developed 
world?" Moriyama asked.
	"Yep," Achika replied. "Anyone with an internet connection was 
vulnerable. He was planning to use offline means to bring the rest of 
the world aboard, by putting the software on discs for people not on 
the net, and using squads to tour developing nations and assimilate 
them."
	"Scary…"
	"The thing is, he started off as the dominant figure in this 
little plan, but he overlooked one little issue," Washu said. "You 
don't give a central computer system that many human minds and not 
expect it to evolve. In the end, it was just playing him."
	As they spoke, a babbling man came into earshot, being carried 
off in a strait-jacket by a group of hospital orderlies. "I could 
have had it all… I was the ruler of the developed world… AND I 
WOULD'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT TOO, IF IT WEREN'T FOR THOSE MEDDLING 
MAGICAL GIRLS!!! I SWEAR TO GOD, IF I SEE ANOTHER MAGIC SHOW, I'LL 
COME BACK AND UNLEASH AN ARMAGEDDON THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER 
SEEN!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!"
	As Biff was led away, the girls looked at him with a curious 
mixture of fear, offset with sweatdrops.
	"I really, really hope they keep him there this time," Rumiya 
mused rhetorically.
	"For once, Rumiya, I agree with you…" Sasami replied. "We'd 
best be on our way back."
	"Absolutely," Achika concurred. She turned to Moriyama. "Thanks 
a lot for your help, sir. There was no way we could have done it 
without you." Then she addressed Washu. "You coming?"
	Washu declined the offer. "No, I think I should stay here and 
help guide the police to a solution."
	"Okay then." Achika and Sammy bowed to her, before rising and 
walking away.
	"WAIT!" Moriyama called out to Achika. "You didn't even tell me 
your name… or your phone number!"
	Achika didn't reply as she and Sammy took off for home. As much 
as she wanted to – he was kind of cute – she couldn't tell him. Her 
reasons were two-fold – one, she wanted to protected her identity…
	…And the other, she REALLY didn't want him to meet her mother.

	After going from typical sanatorium to eerily quiet sanatorium 
in the space of an hour, Arukamu was back to being the typical 
sanatorium once again the day after all of this had happened. Only 
this time, the cries of insanity were more murderous, a lot of them 
calling for the death of one man, whose general description matched 
one Biff Standard. A good quarter of those cries came from the staff.
	Biff himself had been heavily restrained within a padded cell 
no bigger than the storeroom he'd thrown Washu in. The only 
conveniences he had were the bed to which he was tied, and the 
television placed safely out of his range. The only reason why he had 
the television was because it was part of his treatment.
	Outside the locked, fortified door to his cell, Kusanagi talked 
to a young woman with crimped dark brown hair, wearing a lab coat. 
"So, tell me about this treatment, Doctor Haruna."
	"Absolutely, Doctor," the woman replied. "Mr Standard appears 
to display severe misanthropy and malevolence. Much of this appears 
to be linked to a fear of the paranormal… specifically, magic. What I 
intend to do is force Mr Standard to confront those fears, and to 
that end I am subjecting him to what I have dubbed 'magic therapy'."
	"Magic therapy?"
	"Yes. I am subjecting Mr Standard to a looped DVD playback of 
an anthology of imported magic shows – the presenters include David 
Copperfield, Penn & Teller, and an English gentleman named Paul 
Daniels. I threw in the whole collection of Magic's Secrets Revealed 
as an additional precaution to aid in his recovery. I will monitor 
his progress as his treatment continues."
	"When does he start?"
	"I've started the DVD player now." Both Haruna and Kusanagi 
could hear the opening of the first chapter – the Paul Daniels Magic 
Show. Seconds thereafter, Biff joined the demented howls of Arukamu's 
inmates.
	"I believe he's responding, Doctor," Kusanagi smiled, as he 
walked off, taking Haruna with him.

	That evening, back in Okayama, the lounge of the house in back 
of CD Vision was once again alive in celebration, as Chihiro resumed 
her karaoke spectacular.
	She and Misaki actually managed to finish the song they were 
performing yesterday, a performance that elicited an enthusiastic – 
if forced – applause from the collective audience. Misaki and Chihiro 
bowed, smiling with the giddiness of adulation, no matter how 
incorrectly perceived it was.
	As they stepped down from the stage, Sasami approached Misaki 
and handed her a glass of wine. "Here's your drink, Mrs Kekoi."
	"Thank you," Misaki replied.
	Mihoshi came in from the kitchen and deposited a bowl of prawn 
crackers and another bowl of potato chips on the coffee table. "More 
snacks, everyone!" she announced.
	Tired of searching for something that was both better to do and 
a good excuse to not be here, everyone eventually leant forward to 
grab some snacks. Misao, who, like everyone else present, was dressed 
in the same outfit as she was yesterday, grabbed enough for two. Some 
of them she fed to the purple bird that had made himself a permanent 
attachment of her shoulder, where he occasional nuzzled her cheek. 
Sasami took enough for her and Ryo-ohki, but the cabbit appeared to 
not want any.
	She took her seat next to Achika, who was still milling over 
her pocky. Shielded by the hubbub of conversation the others were 
generating, Sasami engaged her in what could be best described as 
shop talk. "There's one thing that puzzles me…"
	"Hmm? What's that?" Achika asked.
	"Well, when you shut down the M-5, the system cleanse would 
have restored everyone to normal. Does that mean you don't have the 
ability to form a symbiosis with any electronic equipment any more?"
	"That's something I've been meaning to test. Watch the 
satellite box on top of the TV."
	Sasami did as bid, staring intently at the satellite decoder 
box on top of her TV. As she did so, she noticed the LED display, as 
some of its numbers and parameters were changing. Sasami gasped in 
astonishment, then looked at Achika… who had the satellite box's 
remote control in her hand. Achika chuckled at the joke, and Sasami 
couldn't help but join in.
	"Nope. I lost that power when the M-5 shut down," Achika 
explained. "I tried it at home last night on my computer. Nothing 
happened."
	"Oh…"
	"Not that I mind or anything. Who needs to control a computer 
with their mind? Takes all the fun out of it."
	Sasami sweatdropped.
	"Hey, Achika!" a voice called out. It was Chihiro. "You haven't 
sung anything yet! C'mon!"
	"Yeah, come on, Little Achika!" Misaki chimed in. "Sing for 
us!"
	"No, I can't sing very well…" Achika politely declined.
	"Don't tell lies!" Misaki replied, in a tone most mothers use 
with their children – when they're infants. "I happen to know you can 
sing very well!"
	"Yeah, and besides, it's just a little fun! I'm not gonna tie 
you to a recording contract or anything!" Chihiro added, trying her 
best to hide a plethora of legal documents from Achika's sight.
	"Yeah, Achika, don't be a spoilsport," Tokimi smiled to her 
friend. "Sing something!"
	Achika sighed in resignation. "Oh, all right. But only if I can 
choose the song."
	Misaki looked disappointed. "Aw, I almost got her singing 
'London Bridge'… she was so cute when she sang that when she was 
four…"
	Chihiro swiftly retracted her support from Misaki, and gestured 
towards her extensive collection of CD+G software. Achika accepted 
the invitation and leafed through it. After locating one particular 
disc, she took it out, scanned its track list, and then nodded when 
she found one she wanted. She swiftly loaded the disc, tapped in the 
track number, then waited for the laser to scan, and eventually play 
her selected track.

End Theme: 'Life is a Flower' by Ace of Base, performed by Grace 
Zandarski (or Megumi Hayashibara).

	--ZZKRT—
	"Wha…? What happened?" Achika asked, caught off guard.
	"Aw, dammit! It cut out again!" Chihiro moaned. "That's the 
fifth time since I bought it that it's done that!"
	"Wait a minute. Mrs Kawai, you mean to tell me that this thing 
breaks down BY ITSELF?!"
	"Frequently. Repair bills are a bitch!"
	"Who cares? Little Achika, can you fix it?" Misaki asked.
	"Oh, I'll fix it, mom. I'll fix it good. MWAHAHAHA…"
	"Achika, what are you doing with that sledgehammer?" Tenchi 
cried. The sound of sledgehammer hitting the tinted plastic of a 
Pathfinder KX3962 turntable canopy was his reply.
	"Electrocute me and make me worry about breaking you, you lame-
ass, overpriced, Taiwanese—"
	"Indonesian," Tokimi corrected.
	"INDONESIAN PIECE OF SH—"
	With the second hit, most of the Japanese national grid was 
discharged into Achika, promptly flash-frying her. She was thrown 
back a few feet, where she landed in a smouldering heap.
	"Itai…"

C&C to jpikachu@ntlworld.com